Posted on 06/03/2015 8:32:49 AM PDT by Theoria
The employees who kept the data systems humming in the vast Walt Disney fantasy fief did not suspect trouble when they were suddenly summoned to meetings with their boss.
While families rode the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and searched for Nemo on clamobiles in the theme parks, these workers monitored computers in industrial buildings nearby, making sure millions of Walt Disney World ticket sales, store purchases and hotel reservations went through without a hitch. Some were performing so well that they thought they had been called in for bonuses.
Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.
“I just couldn’t believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and take over our jobs exactly,” said one former worker, an American in his 40s who remains unemployed since his last day at Disney on Jan. 30. “It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your job. I still can’t grasp it.”
The layoffs at Disney and at other companies, including the Southern California Edison power utility, are raising new questions about how businesses and outsourcing companies are using the temporary visas, known as H-1B, to place immigrants in technology jobs in the United States. These visas are at the center of a fierce debate in Congress over whether they complement American workers or displace them.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I only know the unions make a run at Disney every few years.
What can go wrong?
On top of that, the immigration displacement is just temporary, as all of these jobs will be performed by machines in a few short years.
I was assigned to help a company transform from a telco to an ISP. Their marketing people were very coy about a "big deal" that would bring 1 million customers to the new startup. They hired lots of very talented web and database developers and put together a first class hardware package. They had $6 million sunk in capitalizing the efforts. The game was to "go public". They were so anxious to reap the benefits of "going public" with a big payoff that important things were overlooked. The server room was built out. Self-signup software in place. Overall infrastructure poised for service. Remember that comment about the "coy" marketing people? About two weeks before "cut live", the front end web developers were demanding the home page logo artwork. That's when the marketing people admitted the "customer" was "Unions of America" aka the Democratic National Committee. They asked if the staff at the company was unionized. The laughter that ensued made Saturday Night Live look like rank amateurs. Except they weren't bluffing. They cancelled the engagement. No customers. A company that went "public" on false premises. A share holder lawsuit followed. I spent 3 days doing expert testimony. Not a happy result. Due diligence is critical. Not dealing with weasels is critical.
Why not train them to do the function wrongly, see how long these non Americans last and how long the businesses can sustain using them. After all, what can they do to you, they fired you already.
#18 & 37 I never saw such salaries before until the early 1990’s when Disney’s CEO Michael Eisner was making a mint by firing 3,000 people and being rewarded by wall street with the stock going up.
FMCDH(BITS)
The idea that these IT workers were doing such a great job that they were expecting bonuses is silly. Disney’s IT has lagged far behind other F500 companies for years.
I can’t tell you if the new employees are any better.
I can tell you that Disney has needed a major shake up in their IT department for years. These guys were let go for cause.
The lower the wages the LESS tax the Government collects.
The cause being the outsourcing company was cheaper. Note that the new employees are learning the same applications and the same technology that the former employees were using. This move doesn't involve upgrading either apparently. So if Disney lagged behind the Fortune 500 before then they're going to continue to.
BTTT
Am I the only one seeing this as a response to a minimum wage that’s becoming more and more absurdly high?
I’m guessing obamacare is also a big factor. Now the insurance stuff is on the vendor and not Disney.
Individual workers may have been putting in long workweeks and such, hence the expectation of bonuses - it didn’t have to be the guy(s) responsible for upgrading their systems.
I think you may have it backwards; minimum wage increases are being discussed because a lot of educated American workers are going to be working crappy jobs because companies would rather pay foreign cooies than an American. We have few enough decent jobs as it is, and more and more of them will be given to H1-Bs (leaving the skilled Americans as Wal-MArt greeters and Dollar General cashiers)...
Pretty much, yeah.
Obamacare doesn't enter into it. The IT guys no doubt had insurance long before Obamacare came around. Disney did this so they could drop all the costs - salary, benefits, 401K, you name it. And they would certainly have done it even if Obamacare never passed.
oh I know, we'll get a whole bunch of freepers talking about how these stinking Disney workers were overpaid, union thugs, etc etc.....most of the people that talk that way I'm pretty positive are govt employees living off their wildly inflated pensions...
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