Disney IT Workers, In Lawsuit, Claim Discrimination Against Americans (computerworld.com) 455
dcblogs quotes a report from Computerworld: After Disney IT workers were told in October 2014 of the plan to use offshore outsourcing firms, employees said the workplace changed. The number of South Asian workers in Disney technology buildings increased, and some workers had to train H-1B-visa-holding replacements. Approximately 250 IT workers were laid off in January 2015. Now 30 of these employees filed a lawsuit on Monday in U.S. District Court in Orlando, alleging discrimination on the basis of national origin and race. The Disney IT employees, said Sara Blackwell, a Florida labor attorney who is representing this group, "lost their jobs when their jobs were outsourced to contracting companies. And those companies brought in mostly, or virtually all, non-American national origin workers," she said. The lawsuit alleges that Disney terminated the employment of the plaintiffs "based solely on their national origin and race, replacing them with Indian nationals." The people who were laid off were multiple races, but the people who came in were mostly one race, said Blackwell. The lawsuit alleges that Disney terminated the employment of the plaintiffs "based solely on their national origin and race, replacing them with Indian nationals."
Except they didn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't terminate them "based solely on their national origin and race"
They terminated them based on the fact they can pay Indian workers a fraction of the salary.
Re:Except they didn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't terminate them "based solely on their national origin and race"
They terminated them based on the fact they can pay Indian workers a fraction of the salary.
Did they offer the Americans an equivalent salary?
Re:Except they didn't. (Score:5, Informative)
No, because (somewhat ironically) its illegal to pay Americans that little.
Re:Except they didn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, because (somewhat ironically) its illegal to pay Americans that little.
The lawsuits says that workers were "brought-in", and were mostly H1-B holders. H1-B holders need to be paid market salary.
There's not much the workers can do about jobs that are actually off-shored, but if they were laid off and replaced by Indian H1-B workers who are working locally to transition to off shore teams only because they were not Indian, then they may have a case.
Re:Except they didn't. (Score:4, Insightful)
Missing the point.
H1B needs to be brought in for salary based on their position.
Big-indian-outsourcing-company, advertises their jobs at $5 per hour. Somehow wangles H1-B ( as in, no americans want to be contract engineers at $2.50 per hour, but indians do so being them in ).
Outsourcing company ( read TATA ) now contacts as a U.S company, to another U.S company (disney) to do their IT.
The spirit of the law is mangled to completely unrecognizable pulp.
But the law is obeyed.
Dunno what the fix is. But stop yelling about "bought-in-replacements", you'e missing the loop hole and it's important to understand
Re:Except they didn't. (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems like it would be a pretty easy loophole to close: If you are hiring H1-B workers, the department you are hiring them into cannot be comprised of more than X% of H1-B workers. If you want to pick up 100 H1-B workers for $5.00 an hour, that's fine. But, you might need 900 non-H1-B workers to qualify for that many H1-Bs. And, if you can't find 900 local workers that are willing to work for the wages you are offering, maybe this isn't the right country for your business and you should move it to where your workforce resides.
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Re:Except they didn't. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, the easiest way is to feel sorry for the H1B having to leave their homeland and live in the US. They should therefore earn the median computing wage in the area plus a 40% bonus for living expenses. After all, they have no home here, and will have to rent or buy. They should also gain a company car since obviously they can't bring whatever transportation they have in their old country.
Also, free air fare to visit their relatives at least once a month - and on holidays. Can't have them being sad or missing their family.
I would be happy with that in place for H1B's.
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Her job was an interpreter, Japanese/English. We live in Ohio, so not easy to find an American citizen that is fluent in written Japanese.
Luckily her company paid the lawyers, otherwise i
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But it comes down to who lines the pockets of the most senior official.
Yet when you suggest to an American that they live in an Oligarchy, they look at you like you're crazy.
Re:Except they didn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
What people are missing is Disney laid-off the workers and contracted with Tata to provide the services that the employees were supplying previously. Tata is the company primarily discriminating against American Workers, the workers being tasked with training their replacements, strongly implies the American Workers were qualified, the USG (United States Government) needs to cancel the H1B visas because qualified American Workers were available, Tata needs to pay the former H1B the difference between what was paid to them and what the market rate was (what the former Disney employees were paid) then Tata needs to settle up for the discrimination with the qualified American Workers based on National Origin, then Disney needs to be accountable for creating a Hostile Work Environment by requiring their employees to the insulting (By Disney's CEO's own admission) training of their replacements.
These things need to be made such a hot mess that CEOs break out in hives anytime H1B vistas are mentioned.
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One part of the fix should be that H1-B workers may only work on projects for the company that hires them. They may not then be contracted out as a low-cost talent pool to other companies.
Seems to me that the Tata's of the world are doing exactly that, which is a clear abuse of the program.
Re:Except they didn't. (Score:4, Informative)
Not if a job requirement was specified as being able to speak in Telugu. Boom your discrimination lawsuit has as much chance of guys filing a discrimination lawsuit against stripclubs hiring girls only
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Just give them a few years, I'm sure we'll be automating way judges and lawyers before too long.
Because who doesn't want the law to be enforced 100% pedantically with no regard for nuance? I know I do!
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> Not if a job requirement was specified as being able to speak in Telugu.
I hate to be a party pooper. But courts are capable of seeing through something that transparent.
Telugu is not some made up language. It is a real language native to India, and if the outsourcing company is using two Indian natives for every one local employee, it is very reasonable for the job requirements to include speaking the language. Nothing for the courts to refute.
Re:Except they didn't. (Score:4, Funny)
Strangely enough, I saw an actual, honest job listing that required speaking fluent Klingon as a job requirement. It was for a psychiatric hospital who had gathered up shut in Star Trek nerds that refused to speak any other language and they wanted to try and treat them. Psychiatric experience was a plus but, the job requirement was for a Klingon-English translator. One of the only times I wish I knew Klingon as the salary and benefits were awesome for the time.
The real missed point (Score:2, Insightful)
H1-B visas are for positions they couldn't fill without bringing foreign talent. Laying people off to fill the positions with H1-B is illegal.
Re:The real missed point (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but laying people off to fill their positions with an outside contractor is legal, even if the contractor primarily hires H1-B visa workers for their contracts. It's a loophole that has been abused too many times to count and there's absolutely no sign that it will ever be closed.
Re:The real missed point (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a loophole that has been abused too many times to count and there's absolutely no sign that it will ever be closed.
This NDTV article [ndtv.com] states,
President-elect Donald Trump has said he would not allow Americans to be replaced by foreign workers, in an apparent reference to cases like that of Disney World and other American companies wherein people hired on H-1B visas, including Indians, displaced US workers.
"We will fight to protect every last American life," Mr Trump told thousands of his supporters in Iowa on Thursday as he referred to the cases of Disney world and other US companies.
We'll see how hard he pushes Congress on this matter.
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Trump says a lot of shit. Actions speak louder than words, and in the past he has made use of undocumented workers. In fact, the tower where his administration is currently based was built by 200 illegal Polish labourers.
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But every company does this. No CEO has gone to jail for this yet.
LCA Wage Rate Fuckery (Score:2, Informative)
> H1-B holders need to be paid market salary.
Its a lot more tricky than that.
Determining prevailing wage is based on the LCA (labor conditions application) which basically defines the job. But the employer can file for an H1B for a job multiple times using a different LCA each time. So they can list different "prevailing wage" rates for the same job. Then, once any one of those H1B applications is approved by the government, they switch out the LCA for any of those that were filed, even the ones that
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No, because (somewhat ironically) its illegal to pay Americans that little.
The lawsuits says that workers were "brought-in", and were mostly H1-B holders. H1-B holders need to be paid market salary.
If it's anything like the way Intel does things in Hillsboro, yeah, that's not happening. They just lied to INS to get H1B visas and are paying 'em less than a Taco Bell manager makes.
Re:Except they didn't. (Score:5, Interesting)
Except if you do it through a third party company that's all at arm's length, and nobody bothers enforcing that law anyway. We all know that's true. So the risk to Disney is minimal.
What they're doing with this lawsuit is hitting Disney where it lives -- reputation. What's going to happen is that if Disney doesn't settle, Disney will win on the basis that it's not illegal to discriminate against Americans. How do you think that will go over?
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You're not allowed to discriminate against people based on national origin. Why would Disney win on that basis?
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Only on paper.
There are many scams such as forcing them to pay various fees back to the company that has employed them at market salary.
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Nope H1Bs are not paid less than Americans. They however do work a lot longer hours including taking phone calls with offshore at night. As these are salaried positions there is no overtime only promise of progress within the companies. American employees who had been working standard 9-5 jobs may not be willing to work longer hours and take calls at night. That is why these companies prefer H1Bs as their onsite presence (after considering the cost of visas H1Bs are actually more expensive). Plus if the off
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"Nope H1Bs are not paid less than Americans. They however do..."
get paid less. It's magic.
And they cannot change jobs, so you can ramp up their hours, ramp down their conditions, etc. If they don't like it, all they can do is leave the country, or get another sponsor, which is almost impossible and risky, as their current employer is almost certain to find out they are looking. See "ramp down their conditions, etc."
We should be bringing the people we actually think are worth having in on work visas as re
Re:Except they didn't. (Score:4, Insightful)
"They however do work a lot longer hours"
I have never seen either onshore or offshore Asians works more than 40 hrs a week while my US co-workers covered for them out of hours or during their month long holidays. I have seen US workers work on Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and the 4th of July (which should be illegal IMHO) only to be laid off. I don't buy it.
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Equivalent to American's pay / long hours = much less than X per hour
Therefore they get paid less.
Re: Except they didn't. (Score:2, Informative)
Minimum salary for h1b by law is $60,000. No requirement on benefits other than obamacare. They get alot less. Limits on where they can work. If fired and dont find a new job in 3 months they have to leave the country. Frequently forced to sign contracts in india with penalties in india if they quit for more money.
I work with h1bs. Have for years. Always the lowest paid people on the team by alot. You can google h1b law. Wikipedia explains salary. There is even a government page that lists all h1b wage by c
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That's the fallacy of "Globalization" right there. It does not pull people up, it drags them down. Instead of better salaries, worker and environmental protection laws, investments in infrastructure, and overall improves quality of life it does just the opposite. That is why it must be destroyed.
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Almost. It's equalizing poverty. You see, people in America have been living it up for far too long, and it's time to bring them down a peg or twenty, somewhere around the per capita of say, Brazil.
But it's fine, just think of all the poor foreigners who have better lives while you're waiting in a bread line. It's for the good of humanity! Be a good global citizen now, don't ask questions.
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That's the fallacy of "Globalization" right there. It does not pull people up, it drags them down.
The problem with Globalization is not that its benefits are a fallacy, it's that its benefits are not evenly distributed. The greatest gains are to those with enough capital to invest in companies which benefit from global markets. Then there are those in developing countries, such as China where the average salary has tripled in the last decade. The professional class in developed countries also benefit greatly, such as in the USA where 2/3 of the people leaving the middle class are moving into the upper m
Re: Except they didn't. (Score:2)
The h1b min wage needs to be 80k-110k
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In fact, it's not supposed to be able to do that.
What I think they need to do is to enforce the law that H1B isn't to displace existing workers, and that this needs to be based on effective position and on facility rather than on the company finally paying the end-worker. If no one will obey this or they manage to work around it then the law needs to be changed to further strengthen it.
I do not have a problem with people looking
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Basically I'm generally in-favor of rules that benefit the worker. I want Americans to retain their jobs and not be replaced by companies soliciting for immigrant workers to drive wages down. If immigrant workers are necessary because of a real and true dearth of an existing workfor
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Indian managers (Score:5, Insightful)
Once you get a couple of Indian folks into management positions they just tend to recruit other Indian people and gradually remove whites.
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Once you get a couple of Indian folks into management positions they just tend to recruit other Indian people and gradually remove whites.
This is a bit OT for TFA but Indians have been taking over the US hotel business for at least the last 20-30 years. From a random article from 2012
Nearly half of the motels in the U.S. are owned by Indian Americans.
Why Indian Americans Dominate the U.S. Motel Industry [wsj.com]
H1B is deeply flawed (Score:5, Insightful)
The flaw here is the H1B program needs to be completely eliminated for consulting/services companies (among other things, but this is the topic du jour). If you are a consulting/services company, you should be required to use only US employees in the US. The consulting company outsourcing is a circumvention technique for companies like Disney, who could never have gotten away with replacing all their IT people with H1B employees, but by "outsourcing" to a consulting company, they can legally lay off all of their employees and then benefit from the lower cost from the consulting company hiring a bunch of H1B slave labor. Same net effect, same savings to Disney, but totally legal currently.
It's not flawed in the slightest (Score:2)
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sigh.
you are right, of course. the real agenda WAS by the rich elites to depress wages and crush the middle class just enough so that they don't totally disappear, but that they don't act as 'uppity' as they used to. put them back in their 'place'. hey, that IS their (the boss) mentality, thru and thru, and they are bold as hell now.
you can look at what is written and say the law was about that; but as you indicate, dig deeper and you see the real unwritten intention and since the ones would could punish
Re:H1B is deeply flawed (Score:5, Insightful)
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The H1B program was created as part of the WTO and US signing on. When India agreed to let US sell Coca Cola in India , US agreed to let India sell Software Services in the US . Now selling services needs people to be onsite hence the H1B. If you want to get rid of H1Bs leave the WTO and watch Caterpillar and Boeing factories close.
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Alternately, I'd prefer to see H1B visa's eliminated entirely across the board, in favor of a fast-track program to admit skilled* foreign workers into the country first with permanent resident (green card) status, with the ultimate goal of promoting them to full citizenship. Skilled* STEM workers are exactly the people that we should be seeking out and encouraging to immigrate and become full members of society. H1Bs, or any other visa tied to a specific employer, are appallingly abusive; both of society
Lawyers more creative than engineers (Score:2, Insightful)
I've seen jobs posted (Score:2)
BTW, where the hell is Trump in all this? He finished the Carrier deal (for better or worse). I want him on this one. He's got a pretty clear cut case of visa abuse here. Ti
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Depends on how the law's written (Score:2)
But I honestly don't know if the law takes feelings into account like we do. E.g. if under the law discrimination is discrimination regardless of why you're discriminating. I'm guessing they can easily show that the company Disney outsourced too gives preferential treatment to Indians here on work visas. If they're giving preferential treatment to one nationality (Indians) how is that
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I think they can argue it's not discrimination by listing legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons why they picked the Indians over Americans.
That doesn't necessarily work anymore, now that the courts have invented Disparate Impact [wikipedia.org] Theory.
Even actions that could seem rational for non-discriminatory reasons and seem neutral on their face could still result in being sued over discrimination Via disparate impact.
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This form of discrimination occurs where an employer does not intend to discriminate; to the contrary, it occurs when identical standards or procedures are applied to everyone, despite the fact that they lead to a substantial difference in employment outcomes for the members of a particular group and they are unrelated to successful job performance. An important thing to note is that disparate impact is not, in and of itself,
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They don't need a jury.
How do you think a ruling that says "It's OK for Disney to fire all the Americans" will go over in public opinion? Might have a wee bit of an effect on their pocketbook.
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The premise for the suit is quite creative. And absurd. Its only chance is finding a sympathetic (read: nationalistic) jury. I guess it's worth a shot considering all the protectionist rhetoric that was thrown around during this election cycle.
I think it's mostly a ploy by the lawyers to get Disney to trip up by explaining that it's not racism just price dumping.
Why are hard workers being replaced? (Score:4, Informative)
I have seen US workers work weekends, out of hours and holidays for my entire career. Often covering for contractors and overseas Asian teams who never seem to be available outside of their regular hours. Also they seem to be impossible to contact during their month long holidays no mater the crisis the customers are having.
They just lack the the Protestant work ethic.
And the US workers who "go the extra mile" get laid off anyway. I can only attribute it to race and national origin discrimination.
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This is probably off-topic, but that is one of the things that annoys me the most about working with foreign countries: the random holidays where everyone takes off. We been working with a German company (not on contract, but for some warranty work), and even their US sales rep couldn't get anyone on the phone in October. Maybe it's American pluralism, that not everyone has the same holidays, or maybe it's poor contracts that don't mandate at least 3 nines of level-2 availability for support (or in our ca
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If you have projects scattered over several countries and regions at any point in time you have a high probability of one or more teams out on a religious, seasonal, traditional, or other such holiday. Throw in cultural, time zone, and language barriers in addition to slippage due to lack of face to face communications and distributed projects make no sense.
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I'm not saying people shouldn't have holidays, but how do you run a business or country that closes down for a month?
I don't understand, lots of businesses work like that. In the US, almost no business happen between thanksgiving and new year.
Universities are essentially closed from Dec 20 to Jan 7.
If you are a camping equipment company, I bet your sales department much between September and January.
My parents contract salesman and representative for a gardening furniture/cooking company. Their business is February to July. The rest of the year is just there to prepare the next season.
It actually makes sense to have entir
Very funny at this time of year! (Score:2)
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The Protestant work ethic is based on the assumption that the employer will act like a Christian instead of an exploitative Satanist. Thus it doesn't really apply when employing guest workers at less than a living wage. The employer has already broken their side so expecting extra consideration from the employees is unlikely to happen.
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Now, the WASPS are on top. It's okay to not be one of them - as long as you're fully aware that you are undermenschen and accept it. Since somewhere along the line some damned fool made slavery illegal in this country, we need to get our lower class fro
Sucks but nothing will change. (Score:5, Insightful)
I do feel bad for these workers. The H-1B loopholes that allow bodyshops like Tata to bring in cheaper, ,more compliant workers need be changed. I doubt anything will happen though -- Trump certainly isn't going to do anything that will upset his friends in business. He's basically signaled to every executive out there that concessions are available for the right price and he's willing to cut deals with the Carrier incident.
I don't have a problem with the H-1B program itself - but the fact that it's used to replace older, more senior workers doing routine IT work that doesn't require exceptional skills is the problem. I'm doing systems integration work, and the development teams I'm working with are all slowly being replaced with offshore Indian guys and body shop employees. I'm good for now because someone has to make heads or tails of the messes they want to get working, but I feel that unless something is done there will be no work for experienced people, and no pipeline of newbies to fill entry level positions. If people see they can't get anywhere in IT because there's no entry level work anymore, they're going to study something else.
I see a post or two saying the people filing these lawsuits have no talent...somehow I doubt this. IT is famous for throwing out workers who are 40+ and who demand above a certain salary for their experience. So far, the only hope I've seen in this situation is that there are constantly companies in this loop of offshoring, then bringing IT back in house when it starts going pear-shaped, then repeating. Not all these companies are on the same schedule. What I'll bet happened is that there was a bunch of staff who became very senior developers or sysadmins of a key system, and spent their time working to maintain their small little pigeon-hole of knowledge...this happens a lot in big companies. CIO comes in, gets sold on the idea of offshoring, and just goes through the department salary spreadsheet, killing off the top x% of the list. Offshore body shop gets the contract, and has to reduce costs, so they bring in the H-1Bs to learn the job, then teach it to the 1000s of people they have in India. Believe me, I've seen it multiple times, including the "this sucks, let's reshore everything" part.
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I see a post or two saying the people filing these lawsuits have no talent...somehow I doubt this. IT is famous for throwing out workers who are 40+ and who demand above a certain salary for their experience. So far, the only hope I've seen in this situation is that there are constantly companies in this loop of offshoring, then bringing IT back in house when it starts going pear-shaped, then repeating. Not all these companies are on the same schedule. What I'll bet happened is that there was a bunch of staff who became very senior developers or sysadmins of a key system, and spent their time working to maintain their small little pigeon-hole of knowledge...this happens a lot in big companies. CIO comes in, gets sold on the idea of offshoring, and just goes through the department salary spreadsheet, killing off the top x% of the list. Offshore body shop gets the contract, and has to reduce costs, so they bring in the H-1Bs to learn the job, then teach it to the 1000s of people they have in India. Believe me, I've seen it multiple times, including the "this sucks, let's reshore everything" part.
There are many U.S. companies that are looking to replace "40+" IT workers with cheaper labor. Whether that is H1B Visa people, or students right out of college, they are looking for 3 (new) to 1 (old) replacement salary wise. The Ageism in U.S. IT is rampant. The problem comes when all of those low salaries can't afford to buy your products. You are cutting our throats, and your own Corporate throat as well.
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The thing is why is a 40 year old doing work that can be done by a 20 year old. That guy is no better than the one trying to raise a family on a McD job. With 20 years of experience you should be doing work that a 20 yr old cant do.
what to do (Score:5, Interesting)
I have worked at a few Fortune X (single and low double digit) companies. They have all been addicted to hiring folks from the usual offshore suspects who pay substandard wages and import (mostly) Indian and Eastern European labor for jobs that could clearly be offered to kids fresh out of college with engineering or comp sci degrees in Europe and the US. I honestly can't fathom why. For all the money "saved" there's the SIGNIFICANT wasted productivity and the "meh" value to the business of the average "resource" supplied. Calls take a lot longer, code quality tends to be sucky to average, emails are hard to parse, and you wind up with a "team" who feels like "as long as there are lots of people on a call, we've got it covered." The fact that efficiency measures suck, employees have no skin in the game to improve things, and everything takes a lot longer seems to be ignored.
What is it that ensnares the bean counters to prefer this situation over hiring qualified local candidates? I honestly don't get it. Why is it "better" to pay some unqualified person a low wage, tack on a substantial fee paid to the body shop, and then have everyone suffer through the extended delivery times, angst, etc. It can't be cheaper to do it this way, and if it is, it could not possibly be enough of a savings to merit delaying the delivery of what the business needs in a timely manner. Or can it?
I find the whole thing to be sordid, unsavory, and just demeaning to all concerned. I can't blame the folks who take those H1-B jobs. One trip to Bangalore, Sofia, Kiev, etc and you realize that these are folks that are just trying to make a living. They are acutely aware that many of their co-workers don't like this situation and simply tolerate them. Clearly someone is making some serious $$$ by perpetuating this system. Who? If I was in an industry where the top 20 experts in a particular field were from country X, I could understand. But this is for relatively inexperienced java programmers and sysadmins....clearly not what the H1-B program is designed to help.
What do YOU think?
Re:what to do (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple. Short term profits over long term sustainability. In the short term, expenses go down, profit goes up. By the time the shit has hit the fan, the people making the decisions have cashed out and moved on. They couldn't care less about what happens at that point.
And it tends to be what a lot of the shareholders want, too, for pretty much the same reason.
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what I think: they look at salary levels of individuals AND the fact that non-americans working in america don't know the rules, the laws, the customs here. they are afraid to say NO to the boss. americans who are at least 30 or older know their rights and will say NO to that 5th weekend in a row. indians won't because they are afraid of being sent back. send me back - TO WHERE - 10 miles from where I work? what's the point in that? ;)
so, its those 2 things. lower base salary and the ability to abuse
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If you have 3 very experienced people maintaining an entire system and one of them falls sick, goes to a different company or goes on leave you are severely affected. However if you have 10 mediocre people doing it at lower salaries than the 3 than 1 falling sick or resigning does not affect you that bad. You probably have that much redundancy built in. Its like how earlier we used to build Supercomputers using highly specialized chips and they used to cost a lot. Now we build them by putting Intel chips in
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What is it that ensnares the bean counters to prefer this situation over hiring qualified local candidates?
Bonuses are usually based on quarterly results. The negatives you mention will take a while to hurt quarterly results, while the lower wages instantly boost quarterly results.
Then when the shit starts hitting the fan, the manager moves to their next employer, citing their impressive quarterly savings as a reason to hire them.
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So very much this. I've never lost my job to any of those bangalore or
Re:what to do (Score:5, Insightful)
What is it that ensnares the bean counters to prefer this situation over hiring qualified local candidates? I honestly don't get it. Why is it "better" to pay some unqualified person a low wage, tack on a substantial fee paid to the body shop, and then have everyone suffer through the extended delivery times, angst, etc. It can't be cheaper to do it this way, and if it is, it could not possibly be enough of a savings to merit delaying the delivery of what the business needs in a timely manner. Or can it?
One year when I worked at a bank the CTO published our annual goals, and one of the two goals was to achieve an average development rate less than $30 per hour. Everyone in the room knew what that meant ... or we thought we did. There was no one there making less than $30/hr at the time, so we expected we were all going to be replaced by low-price contractors, or the work would simply be outsourced.
But our department head was smarter than that. He engaged an offshore team of 20 people. We had 10 onshore. We never sent them any work that mattered, and a significant portion of our project manager's job wen to "keeping them busy" with things that would show up on a status report, but that didn't affect our actual work product.
The average development rate went down even thought the total spend went up, and we kept delivering what we always had.
You tell me the metric, I'll tell you the easiest way to game it.
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Clearly someone is making some serious $$$ by perpetuating this system. Who?
Mostly executives pushing the cost ahead of them. Hire cheaper staff, costs go down quick and product quality and reputation slower so short term you boost margins, raise the stock price, collect your quarterly bonus and leave as a great CEO. Hire more expensive staff, costs go up quick while product quality and reputation only slowly gets better, magins are down, stock price is down, no bonuses and everybody is unhappy with you. Usually you're shuffled out of office before your investments pay off. Nobody'
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The cash comes out of a different bucket so those "productivity" numbers become wonderful, leading to praise and promotion of bean counters.
It's a misdirection game and not improvement.
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That's because management is universally insane, and will only ever count costs that are actually being measured by their own bosses. Lost productivity is not being measured and therefore not being counted. It's not about productivity, it's about optimizing the pointless metric du joure. ...simple example. My company has seen fit to equip me with a laptop that has a 5400rpm harddisk and a corporate security solution that cannot be disabled, and that insists on laboriously scanning every header file I want t
How will Disney defend itself? (Score:4, Interesting)
Their big problem is that they fired all the previous workers because hiring Indian 1HB was cheaper, despite the delusional claims in some of the previous posts. Replacements never are paid equal wages in the real world. However, if Disney goes anywhere near that then they can be sued for breaking the 1HB regulations. Just because the Feds side with Big Business in screwing workers doesn't mean that law has been repealed, so civil suites can still provide an individual with some legal recourse.
This case could really shake things up. In fact, I bet that it never goes to trial and Disney settles out of court because they are terrified what would happen if it got in front of a jury. Unless there is some sort of in court judgement against the workers bringing the suite, you can be sure that this will be the first of a big wave of long overdue lawsuits. I can't wait.
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It will be easy for Disney to defend itself. They didn't hire the workers. They outsourced their IT work to a third party company. They're the ones that hired the H1B workers. Disney just did what a lot of companies do, something I hear all the time, even in the public sector. Concentrate on your core business. Get rid of everything else. If it's something you still need done, hire an outside group to do that.
I work in IT at a state university. I've seen/heard this multiple times. Even when pointin
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Conspiracy (Score:2)
The arrangement looks like a conspiracy to violate the relevant laws. The outsourcing firm and Disney are both equally on the hook here.
Trump (Score:3)
Trump struck out again! (Score:2)
I'd be more impressed with Trump if he met with these 250 workers rather than meet with the heads if large IT companies.
This. It's not as if he was filling arenas with common workers or had thousands in overflow lines waiting to see him.
Even after the election he might have considered holding rallys with local people. Instead he spent all his time meeting with potential cabinet members.
There's no way meeting with the heads of IT companies would do the US *any* good. None at all.
Those companies aren't the biggest abusers of H1B, so meeting with them will do little or no good.
(Fake news seems to be the meme du-jour, so I thoug
Boycott (Score:5, Informative)
I know this is seen as a useless attempt. However, I personally have. Instead of taking our grandson to Disney World two years ago, we took him on a road trip and visited 9 national parks instead. This year again we boycotted Disney and went to NY and Washington DC. Both trips the last two years cost us LESS Than one week in Disney World. A week there is at LEAST $10K (if you stay at one of their resort hotels) for a family. So imagine if 1,000 people did the same thing and saved $10K. That would be $10,000,000 Disney would lose.
Just a thought....
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The ones STILL whining are people who were coasting and now have no relevant skills to keep working for Disney or to go get a new job."
Spoken like someone who hasn't had this happen to them yet. FYI, if you're serious, it's not just crusty old BOFHs and mainframers that are getting this treatment. The loopholes that allow service providers to use H-1Bs to fill non-exceptional positions are basically a cap on salaries. I'm betting the positions that were "found" for all these displaced techies are project ma
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Thank you for saying what needs to be said.
Also, there is no such thing as someone being "bias". The word is "biased" (something you are) rather than "bias" (something you have).
But the one good thing about Reddit & 4chan neologisms and bad usage is that it makes it easier to know whom to ignore.
Re: (Score:3)
Also, there is no such thing as someone being "bias".
Unless you're the personification of bias. I am become bias, destroyer of estimators.
Re:I live in Orlando (Score:4, Interesting)
Now you're unemployable for life.
Uh, no. I was unemployed for two years (2009-10), underemployed for six months (working 20 hours per month), and filed for chapter seven bankruptcy in 2011. For two years I was told by hiring managers that I was overqualified for minimum wage work and told by recruiters that I was unemployable. The day after my bankruptcy got finalized I got full-time work again because the economy turned around and employers needed to fill positions.
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And let me guess...you got a job in government IT?
Nope. Dell for a PC refresh project at the company I worked for before I got laid off for two years. Got promoted to project lead on my first day because I knew the company and everyone in help desk. Got a lot jokes about HR hiring anyone off the street.
They hire anyone, even the unemployable.
For the position I applied for in government IT, it required 20+ years of IT experience.
Re: I live in Orlando (Score:2)
Which is why you don't stick around at a company which is too far behind the times. Your company isn't responsible for your future employability. You are. Once enough exit interviews show them why their best people are leaving they will either change or keep losing all but their worst employees (probably forcing them to bring in contractors).
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Your company isn't responsible for your future employability.
Any company that thinks like this doesn't care about people and will do unacceptable things to exploit you as an expendable resource. The world is rapidly become a shitter place because of this.
I agree that a company which doesn't take an employee's career into significant consideration is a poor employer, but the strategic needs of a company will often not coincide with all of its employees. The thought that employees should be able to absolve responsibility of handling their career to their employee is essentially treating them as children incapable of caring for themselves.
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No, that's not how it works. You interview for jobs requiring virtualization skills, and you tell them you have virtualization experience. You can talk the talk and answer any questions asked of you intelligently. That's all a modern tech interview is about nowdays anyhow: winning the quiz show. Your future employers don't know precisely what you did on the last job and don't really give a fuck anyway. Just so long as you fit their salary requirements and pass their quiz game in the interview.
I eagerly awai
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That is very true, but the Trump justice department will operate under very different rules.
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