Posted on 10/06/2004 2:27:43 PM PDT by JesseHousman
OK Juan. You say you were a fry cook in Mexico City? No problemo, here's you "skilled" visa.
Again, your company refused to pay market rates, then used that as a justification to bring in foreign labor... SCAM.
That is exactly the problem.
That is a base annual rate of $88,200 - if the company were to pay what the candidates felt they were worth - say $160,000 base - the company goes under. Who won?
Boy howdy! At my company when one of our "skilled" Indian employees has a problem they get in a huddle of five or six Indians and try to save their buddy. If an American worker has a problem and doesn't solve it on the spot he's told he needs to improve his skills or leave. We aren't even allowed to talk about the problems resulting from our foreign employees. The management has bet on a horse and dammit, that horse is going to win no matter what.
We are on the same side here. I don't like it either - but the problem is SO much bigger than visa issues.
The problem is the free trade and free traitor mindset. To heck with building long term growth, it is get it quick take a golden parachute and get out.
If the work requires the skills of people with 20 years of experience in a highly specialized and technical field, and they can only pay in the 80s for the work, then they either A) persued a project with too little profit to accomplish in the first place or B) Planned from day one to undercut labor by bringing in foreign labor.
How much do those same companies pay their top sales producers per sale commission? 20% 30% 40%? There is clearly money in the product to pay salaries and remain competative, its simply a matter of where and how they prioritize.
If you know going in the prevailing wage in the industry you need to hire is 150k a year per person, and you can't make the project profitable paying those wages, then you shouldn't be persuing the project... seriously, whats the prevailing cost over say 3 many years? Say they need 5 guys, that represents less than 1 Million dollars on a 3 year project, if $1 Million is going to bust their budget of a major aerospace project, they are persuing a project that likely shouldn't even be bothered with in the first place.
Employer intentionally and knowingly decided NOT TO PAY MARKET WAGE, and H1B gave them a cheat card to get away with it... H1B are SUPPOSED to be only for positions where you cannot find american talent capable to do the job.... the example you gave is NOT the case... there were pleanty of americans CAPABLE of doing the job, they just refused to pay market rates to employ them to do it.
H1B is a complete SCAM.
No the problem is that H1B give the companies a "Get out of Jail" card for refusing to pay market rates. If you bother to look into the requirements for hiring an H1B its purpose is for bringing in people to do jobs you CAN'T find american's capable of doing. There is no shortage of americans who CAN do the jobs offered, NEVER WERE! Even at the height of the tech bubble there was pleanty of domestic labor for the jobs available.
The problem is is that companies find Americans who are CAPABLE and WILLING to do the job but they are unwilling to pay them market rate for the work... so they go and abuse the intent of the H1B program because they haven't met the requirements that they "CANNOT FIND AMERICAN WORKERS".. but have decided that they just won't pay market rates.
Exactly.
It's been 25 years for me, but I can tell you that Mexican illegals have no problem discriminating against Americans (both white and black) if they can get control of hiring. Typically, hiring on 'crewed' jobs is done by referral -- so who do you think they are going to refer?
The foreman may even be a WASP, but typically in the interests of crew stability, they defer to workers who work together. The one thing I never found were illegals willing to be team players with white English speaking males -- the hatred was rather palpable.
If the foreman is Mexican, you can completely forget it. The discrimination will be overt and blunt.
So, "why don't you just ask" is naive. It's one of the reasons I got an engineering degree -- didn't want to ever face having to work on a crew again with that kind of crap going on. Especially on oil rigs, where having to work with some violent illegal next to you can be hazardous to retention of your fingers.
Well, my job is gone and so are thousands of others, airbus won in the market place over and over and over. So now the work is done out of the country. It's very sad. I am not sure if you are saying that the company is the bad guy here, if that is what you are saying, I don't necessarily agree. I am very much in favor of a capitalist society where a company should be free to make a profit.
I am quite employable, but choose to stay home. My spouse is employed in a technical field that cannot be outsourced, thank goodness, and is able to support us.
South Florida is dominated by doctors, lawyers, tourism, and crime. Silicon Valley it isn't.
Boeing makes the best plains, but airbus has government support. They are outsourcing their manufactoring as fast as the can. They no longer make their computers, they have subcontracted that out to other companies. They are even now outsourcing r&d as well as quality control.
Airbus wages are rather high. The reason Airbus made such inroads in the U.S. was the use of walk away wet leases, underwritten by the French state and the EU member countries of the Airbus consortium.
It was this kind of trade tactic that led to the WTO filing by the U.S. last week.
Industrie Airbus and EADS have no significant wage advantage; probably the opposite. What they do have are governments that are on their side. Meanwhile, two of the three major U.S. airframers are gone; the last standing one basically has to produce in other countries to get them to buy anything (and they demand access to the technology as well); and the chattering classes who print money to keep the Beltway economy going merely shrug and say "it's free trade", which is ridiculous.
45$/hr is real good money for someone who is a permanent employee. But for a contractor who has to pay both halves of the Social Insecurity tax, estimated taxes, and their own health insurance, it works out to a LOT less in take home pay.
I don't know which type you were hiring but perm vs. contract makes a huge difference in the hourly rate the employee can deal with.
I've done a bit of consulting on the side and the rule of thumb is that if you see half of it your lucky. So of 45/hr you'll see about 22/hr, which works out to about 45K a year. Up here that's still good money but in some areas of the country (California, for one) it won't pay the bills.
LQ
It isn't that there aren't any engineers in the US, it is that a foriegn born US educated engineer will work for peanuts while a US born citizen will not.
Many business majors hate engineers. We make them feel stupid.
Yes. This is just to import someone over here for 27k to replace the American worker and his family's benefits. We have plenty of talent but this is a way (much like outsourcing) to avoid the labor market of laws of supply and demand.
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