Southern California Edison IT workers 'beyond furious' over H-1B replacements

Information technology workers at Southern California Edison (SCE) are being laid off and replaced by workers from India. Some employees are training their H-1B visa holding replacements, and many have already lost their jobs.
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The H-1B program "was supposed to be for projects and jobs that American workers could not fill," this worker said. "But we're doing our job. It's not like they are bringing in these guys for new positions that nobody can fill.

"Not one of these jobs being filled by India was a job that an Edison employee wasn't already performing," he said.
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SCE employees said that since August, when the layoffs began, the composition of the IT workplace began to change. "I see a lot of Indian people walking the halls, and less Americans," said a third IT worker interviewed.

As you point out the shareholders can play a role. In 2008, after the 2007 crash the shareholders of Goldman Sachs were shocked to learn their 3 top executives all earned more than $65 million. Forty-three % voted for a Shareholder Advisory on Executive Compensation. While not a win, it was scary enough that in 2009 the CEO only earned a modest $25 million. I have not found his salary after that.

During that period when my GE shares fell from $50 to $5, I was also shocked to find that the top seven GE executives continued to be paid over $10 million each. I also signed my proxy to vote for a similar proposal. Stockholders, vote your shares even if you only have a few, pressure your University foundations, or unions to do the same since many have huge blocs of shares.

In 1983 during the Reagan Admin. both Democrats and Republicans voted to “save” Social Security by having a 90% wage cap for FICA deductions. That was the only year it was at 90% because while the increase in that figure was pegged to inflation, in the same period upper level wages started increasing by 10% to 20%. The wage cap has since been as low as 82%. Restoring it to a true 90% would save Social Security. Increasing it by 1/2% a year up to 95% would enable a fix of the other injustice wrought in 1983. That year, our bipartisan politicians also agreed that for the FIRST time SS recipients should also pay taxes on their benefits which they had already paid taxes on once before. An exemption of $25,000 for singles and $32,000 for couples was included in the calculating formula. (Where was Grover Norquist when that taxation travesty was approved?) That figure has not been changed in 32 years. If adjusted for inflation, those figures would now be around $59,000 and $75,000. No wonder the middle class is disappearing and many widows and widowers are “living in sin.”

So the bottom line is that the big money boys are perfectly willing to scrap jobs for Americans so long as they can continue to justify their obscene salaries and perks. Remember when the auto moguls flew to DC in their corporate jets to beg for a government bail out?

As one commenter said, many children are raised to feel that physical labor is beneath them. My late husband was raised in a working class family in mid West farm country, where he had summer jobs on farms. One time when he was having trouble finding work, he screamed “I didn’t go to college to end up doing shxx work.” I had suggested he take a warehouse job until he could find something more in line with his business degree. He was 6 foot, 200 lbs and strong as a ox, as stubborn too. ;-)

Like I said, it is up to each individual enterprise to select whom they should hire. Than includes people on H-1B visa’s. In my field off heavy machinery design and manufacturing, I have seen very good and very bad engineers from my own country of origin, India.

After I was hired as the first Indian in my outfit, my company thought all Indian engineers must be like me, and they went on a hiring binge of Indians. Well, like from every other country, there are intelligent people and not so intelligent people.

In the field of IT programmers, the same rule applies. If an outfit is dumb enough to hire incompetent workers, the market forces will catch up and hasten it’s demise.

At the end of day, I believe free market capitalism is the best approach to general prosperity. Protectionism is a proven failure for higher living standards, again and again. In United States we have too much of crony capitalism rather than free market capitalism. Get rid of all tax loop holes and institute sales based tax. That approach guarantees flourishing of efficient producers and well deserved demise of non-efficient producers of goods and services. Income based taxation does just the reverse.

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