FWD.us To Laid-Off Southern California Edison Workers: Boo-Hoo 612
theodp writes: Speaking at a National Journal LIVE event that was sponsored by Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us and Laurene Powell Jobs' Emerson Collective, FWD.us "Major Contributor" Lars Dalgaard was asked about the fate of 500 laid-off Southern California Edison IT workers, whose forced training of their H-1B worker replacements from offshore outsourcing companies sparked a bipartisan Senate investigation. "If you want the job, make yourself able to get the job," quipped an unsympathetic Dalgaard (YouTube). "Nobody's going to hold you up and carry you around...If you're not going to work hard enough to be qualified to get the job...well then, you don't deserve the job." "That might be harsh," remarked interviewer Niharika Acharya. Turning to co-interviewee Pierre-Jean Cobut, FWD.us's poster child for increasing the H-1B visa cap, Acharya asked, "Do you agree with him?" "Actually, I do," replied PJ, drawing laughs from the crowd.
They trained their replacements (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the same old lies from these H1B advocates (Score:5, Insightful)
Edison wanted cheaper workers, plain and simple. Dalgaard and Cobut should be ashamed of themselves, but slimeballs like that know no shame.
Re:It's the same old lies from these H1B advocates (Score:5, Insightful)
Edison wanted cheaper workers, plain and simple. Dalgaard and Cobut should be ashamed of themselves, but slimeballs like that know no shame.
They're not slimeballs, they're fucking morons.
When the original IT staff is training their replacements, a fucking moron would realize they are more than qualified to do the damn job.
This was about money, plain and simple. And any fucking moron who wants to stand up and claim otherwise will earn their title of fucking moron for assuming the rest of us are as dumb and ignorant as they are.
Re:It's the same old lies from these H1B advocates (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll accept that argument the moment that I'm given the legal ability to purchase something from any nation on the planet, legally import it, and legally use it within the United States.
Instead, U.S. workers must compete against foreign workers in labor, while U.S. corporations are protected from foreign corporations (or themselves) in sales through geographically segreated licenses, import restrictions, and digital rights management schemes. If publishers are willing to sell their goods in Brataslava for 25% of US retail, we should be able to buy it for that price. If manufactures want to sell electronics to the UK at UKP-USD parity, the brits and northern irish should be able to simply buy those products out of the US.
"Nobody's going to hold you up and carry you around..." is a good theory only if it applies to all. But it most certainly does not.
Re:It's the same old lies from these H1B advocates (Score:5, Informative)
> "Nobody's going to hold you up and carry you around..." is a good
> theory only if it applies to all. But it most certainly does not.
it's not a good theory, or practice, even if it did apply to everyone. we live in a society, not some dog-eat-dog nightmare-fantasy hellhole.
"i'm alright, fuck you jack" is not a sustainable ethos for any individual and certainly not for a civilisation. it's a psychopath's creed and psychopaths are at best parasitic on society if not outright destructive to it.
Re:It's the same old lies from these H1B advocates (Score:5, Insightful)
Could not agree more strongly.
There is this bizarre, pseudo-libertarian mindset in the US currently that "less government intrusion in the marketplace is always better", which is a steaming crock of shit if there ever was one.
What's best for individuals and society in general is for people not to be abused by corporations and governments that wield extreme amounts of marketplace or legal power. In other words, the closer we get to the old-school economics definition of "perfect competition", where everyone has complete knowledge of the marketplace and no one can influence it, the better. But the only way we move away from a marketplace controlled by a small number of huge corporations and toward something we would all consider far more fair, is by (gasp!) government intervention. This means laws against false advertising and insider trading, governments blocking absurd mergers that harm customers, etc. The marketplace we want is a human fabrication that does not spontaneously arise; the total lack of government intervention in markets isn't nirvana, it's anarchy.
Re:It's the same old lies from these H1B advocates (Score:5, Insightful)
The sentence was not advocating the theory as a good theory... just one that would have to be equally applied to all. If the rule applies to all you have the possibility of the masses deciding that it is a bad rule - a Lockean apprach, if you will. If the rule applies only to most (those not in power), while protecting those who have wealth and/or power, you're living in a Hobbesian dytpoia already. The soverign is simply a cabal of power interests rather than a single monarch.
Now you've run completely off the rails. Of course it's a sustainable ethos, at least for historical measures of sustainability. That is the basis of countries, states, municipalities, and neighborhoods. Sure, you can build some social network to mitigate it, and there may be some charitable efforts to compat it, but reality is still still "we're alright, fuck you jack" to an astoundingly large degree.
Feel free to disprove that by donating deveral hundred dollars to Nepali relief efforts. Or any international relief effort for that matter.
Re:It's the same old lies from these H1B advocates (Score:5, Insightful)
Why can't they make their country better, rather than making ours worse by proxy?
Re:It's the same old lies from these H1B advocates (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck those poor indians who get to live in a protected market where they can buy cheap food, drugs, movies, computer development software, computers while getting to earn income in a different country with higher costs where poverty level income is thousands of dollars higher than middle class income in india due to those lower costs.
If u.s. workers were allowed to reimport all the items sold for cheaper in india, it would still be difficult to compete (higher property costs here) . Heck, my blood pressure medicine is $5 a pill. The same pill "illegally" on line can be had from india for 10 cents.
The same movie I pay $16 for, they pay $2.49 for. The same movie I pay $12 to see in theaters, they pay $.50 for.
In the long run it doesn't matter. By 2055, wage stagnation here, and much higher inflation there will equalize wages to the point where the advantage is lost. But it should darn well matter to voters here now who should be aware politicians are not enforcing the law. It's illegal to replace existing u.s. workers directly with h1b workers. At a minimum, when this is occurring, the limits on H1B's should be reduced- not increased.
Re:It's the same old lies from these H1B advocates (Score:4, Insightful)
So, it's not the businesses that are to blame. It's the laws that permits them.
Re:It's the same old lies from these H1B advocates (Score:5, Insightful)
So, it's not the businesses that are to blame. It's the laws that permits them.
I don't disagree with your statement, just the lack of morality of those pushing for more H1Bs. For the record, I'm generally fiscally conservative, but this shit must be stopped.
Re:It's the same old lies from these H1B advocates (Score:5, Interesting)
Trust me, I understand that. I'm married to a double MBA, and am a manager at a large corporation myself.
Morality at the business level typically depends on several things.
Is the company publicly owned?...If so, their morality is only dictated by laws and regulations, other than that, they have an obligation to their shareholders to make as much ROI as possible. Obviously, market forces (news, and consumers) can drive them toward doing more morally acceptable things, but they're typically only doing so because it's driving profits...they don't want bad PR.
Privately owned businesses can be driven in any direction their owners please, within legal bounds. My dad owned a small business...morality at that level is more of a personal style issue. Can I run my business, make a reasonable profit, and still not be an asshole to my employees...."reasonable" being in the eye of the beholder/owner.
Re:It's the same old lies from these H1B advocates (Score:4, Insightful)
"they have an obligation to their shareholders to make as much ROI as possible."
I get sick to my stomach every time I read this bullcrap. ROI is not simply just cash. ROI can be a lot of things, including the improving of the quality of life for the workers, or the areas in which the company operates. Since nobody has the balls to fight the "it's only the green" mentality, we all get fucked in the end.
Re:It's the same old lies from these H1B advocates (Score:4, Insightful)
other than that, they have an obligation to their shareholders to make as much ROI as possible.
That's just so much bullshit I don't even know where to begin. Firstly it's not true: there has never, ever in the history of everything been a legal precedent in favour of that. No one has ever successfully sued a company for NOT doing something deeply skeezy for profit.
Ever.
ever ever ever.
If you also follow it to it's deeply illogical conclusion, then you find that a company is obliged to kidnap, slaughter and grind babies for dogfood if they can get away with it and use it to turn a profit.
Naturally that's complete and utter crap.
You're also discounting that companies are soylent green (made from people), and that at every stage a living person with a real brain makes a decision.
Re:It's the same old lies from these H1B advocates (Score:4, Interesting)
It's it not really the people's fault either, but the powerful few who manipulated them.
I'm sure we could make an excuse for them as well (or we'll have just come full circle) but the buck has to stop somewhere.
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The buck not stopping is a perfectly valid situation.
In fact one could argue it is exactly how the world got so ridiculous in the first place. Everyone complains and blames the other guys who in turn blames someone else until the graph with cycles is formed.
And while this pointless circular finger pointing goes on, the world burns. And it turns out we are almost meaning that literally...
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Not really. The laws exist because the businesses bought them. H-1Bs werenmt invented out of a vacuum.
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You couldn't find an Estwing [estwing.com] hammer ?
That tool *will* last a lifetime, BTW.
Re:It's the same old lies from these H1B advocates (Score:4, Informative)
Yep, all that stuff is gone. Only 10-15 years ago I think, Porter-Cable tools were still made in the US, but that's been moved to Mexico..
However, if you want to find some American-made stuff at Home Depot, go to the electrical aisle, and look at all the dirt-cheap electrical sockets (the kind you install in your walls) and light switches (again, the kind you install in house walls). They usually cost less than a dollar each (unless you get some fancy kind), and they all said "made in USA" last time I checked. Of course, those products are not made for a global market (they're only usable in North America: Canada and Mexico has the same standards; not sure about South America, but everywhere else uses entirely different electrical hardware), and since this is easily the largest market for construction goods like that, and also since there's probably a large amount of automation involved in their manufacture, it probably hasn't made sense to move production offshore yet.
There's actually still a lot of stuff being made in the US these days, it just depends. US manufacturing today is generally heavily automated, so it doesn't involve much labor; anything requiring too much labor gets moved offshore to where labor is cheap. But here's a few things off the top of my head that are still made here:
- Tesla cars (california of all places)
- Many other cars (I heard Volvo is opening a new plant in South Carolina I think; lots of foreign automakers have plants in the southern states)
- manufactured homes (too big to transport across the ocean)
- specialty/high-end products (here's an article I ran across, lots of stuff like custom-make bicycles, high-end clothing/bags, etc.: http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/13/... [cnn.com])
- here's a whole website for you: http://www.stillmadeinusa.com/ [stillmadeinusa.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Part of the qualification was their cost. I bet they failed that one.
Re:They trained their replacements (Score:5, Informative)
Yep, the nerve of them, unwilling top live in the closet and eat the table scraps the CEO tossed them. All they had to do is pant and go "WOOF" occasionally.
Note that there is actually a law against what Edison did, it's just not enforced. I guess you side with the criminals.
Re:They trained their replacements (Score:5, Insightful)
These guys are jerks. Obviously the Edison IT workers were qualified - they trained their replacements. Equally obvious they were available to do the job, so there was no reason to bring in H1Bs. Outright fraud by Edison, abetted by the government.
I think training someone else to do a job is harder than doing the job, so I'd say they were better than qualified.
Re:They trained their replacements (Score:4, Insightful)
Why in the hell would anyone train their replacement though? If you see your job forcibly being taken over by someone else, I would say screw you and walk away.
Re:They trained their replacements (Score:5, Interesting)
Why in the hell would anyone train their replacement though?
Because usually all you know is that /somebody/ is going to be replaced: it might be you, it might be any one of the twenty other people who do a nearly identical job to you. You hang around because you hope that - when the cut comes - you are one of the few spared and you don't want to work with idiots (thus having to do not only your own job but covering for all the replacements). Or working for a large corporation hasn't stripped you entirely of your conscience, you won't want to leave the same burden on any of your current co-workers if you yourself are laid-off and they aren't (you may even care about the customers too, who shouldn't have to deal with poorly trained replacements).
Even the more pre-emptive and forward-thinking employees who have sent out resumes would still stay at the job as long as they can until they actually get an offer for a new job.
Having said all that, I once was fired "immediately" but was then "allowed" to stay an extra two weeks to train my replacement. I graciously turned them down and left right after the meeting.
Re:They trained their replacements (Score:5, Interesting)
Given current business practices in the US, the rational thing to do is train your replacements incorrectly, but in such a way as their lack of training is only noticeable after you are fired, or long enough after the training has taken place that it can't be tracked down to your specific instruction. This way, you either harm the company who fucked you or you give them an employee who can't do the job, showing that H1Bs aren't worth the effort.
Re: (Score:3)
So they're paying less for that employee, but they're not going to get as much productivity out of him, ei
Re: (Score:3)
Given current business practices in the US, the rational thing to do is train your replacements incorrectly, but in such a way as their lack of training is only noticeable after you are fired, or long enough after the training has taken place that it can't be tracked down to your specific instruction.
When the geek turns to thoughts felonies he contrives schemes so finely calibrated that they cannot possibly work.
I dunno, I am not seeing much difference between his plans and the actions of a good amount of CEOs that come on board a company, drive it into the ground while sucking up any profits laying about, and the bail in their golden parachutes before everything hits rock bottom. Hell I can think of two of them have made runs at being president.
Re: (Score:3)
You'll usually know you're getting a promotion because management doesn't usually spring "SURPRISE YOU'RE A MANAGER NOW!" on people in the context of bringing in H1-Bs or offshoring. Nobody in their right mind promotes someone in that scenario without preparing them for their new responsibilities.
Certainly, if they are going to get a replacement for this person because of an impending promotion, you want to *tell them that* so that the promoted person doesn't hilariously think that they're actually getting
Re:They trained their replacements (Score:5, Interesting)
In a previous job I had the choice between leaving and leaving with a bonus if I would train my replacements. I took the bonus, which was the rational choice.
Re:They trained their replacements (Score:4, Insightful)
probably because the company threatened the workers' severance packages if they quit or gave them any excuse to sack them: train your replacements and get what you're entitled to or quit and get fuck all.
as with many other abuses of and thefts from workers, this is probably legal. or, at least, ignored by anyone in authority who could investigate and press charges.
Re:They trained their replacements (Score:5, Interesting)
A friend's company outsourced the IT department and Call Centers.h
He agreed to train the replacements.
What he got out of the deal...that is, what his company did for him.
3 more months of employment than those who refused
3 trips to Europe where the outsourced call centers were. (His wife joined him for a European vacation.)
New contacts
Great recommendations
Several thousand dollars of IT equipment
Retraining -- at least $10K in training and salary while being retrained
With the retraining, he was able to land a new job as a "Limited Time Employee" for a major integrator and works a project in the city he lived in. His LTE work has gone on for over 3 years (kind of like a real job and it expected to last for another 3 years. (The "contract" is rebid periodically and he may be picked up by the contract-winner so there is the possibility of employment beyond the 3 year contract he knows about.)
Re:They trained their replacements (Score:5, Informative)
These guys are jerks. Obviously the Edison IT workers were qualified - they trained their replacements. Equally obvious they were available to do the job, so there was no reason to bring in H1Bs. Outright fraud by Edison, abetted by the government.
It's more of a sleight of hand trick: the actual issue on the table was price; the 'FWD.us' flacks did a quick swap to capability (so that they could assert that those lazy workers could have gotten the job if they just up-skilled some more or something); and then abandoned the issue before anyone could point out that 'make yourself able to get the job' is not a matter of 'become more capable'; but 'become cheaper and more powerless.'
At least when these guys are talking about actually unskilled individuals what they say is somewhere close to true-ish, albeit not very helpful(yes, it is true that people with no skills and tepid intelligence are fucked. Any plans on how the bottom couple of quintiles are going to just train their way into being somebody you'd let touch an application, much less pay to do so?); but this one is a pure cost move. The workers were able to get the job, that's why they had it. They did have the skills, that's how they trained their replacements. They just weren't cheap enough.
Obviously, if you run a company whose two main costs are techies and electricity, you want to be able to hire techies for whatever qualifies as subsistence wages in Uttar Pradesh; but don't pretend that that's about 'skills', and don't fucking pretend you are doing us a favor by preaching some wise words about job creation at the same time.
Re:They trained their replacements (Score:5, Interesting)
Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
If a company can't find enough skilled workers, they need to raise wages to attract better candidates and let the companies who aren't willing to pay as much draw from the pool of applicants who are less qualified. Otherwise they can pick from what's available and spend some time training their hires.
Re:They trained their replacements (Score:4, Insightful)
It brings to mind this wonderful quote oft. paraphrased by unionists:
"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me."
-- Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)
Well US IT workers, welcome to the real world. While you have been living in your tech bubble for over a decade, this has been happening in one form or another to US factory and other workers for a very long time. People bellyached of course but nothing of substance was done.
Everybody lined up behind the republican or democrat soup kitchen line or just opted out and the country continued as it always has.
I cannot remember how many anti-union posts I have read on this very website over the years (although less so lately...too little too late of course) The ridiculous pontificating for "free-market", "libertarianism" or other bollocks with no scientific, moral or any other foundation at all.
And while you might cry "everyone else is the same, why pick on us?". But you are not the same. You had access to the tools of change the whole time, you are smart and capable.
This is what comes from being asleep at the wheel. You get what you vote for...even if you don't vote.
PS: I am not talking to the extreme minority who did something - congrats to you and I wish there were more of you.
Re:They trained their replacements (Score:5, Insightful)
We know because the outgoing workers were required to train their replacements. That can only happen if the outgoing workers knew what the H1-Bs would need to know.
Re:They trained their replacements (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't meant that the replacements can't do it better.
Clearly, if the H1Bs needed training, then they weren't qualified in the first place.
Re: (Score:3)
you fully admit that they played you for a fool and you are proud of it, good for you
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, cheap slave labor from overseas prompted their replacement.
live by the sword... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:live by the sword... (Score:4, Funny)
Fair is fair, so let's make sure it cuts both ways, all the way up the management chain.....
COMMUNIST!!!!
Re:live by the sword... (Score:4, Interesting)
Doesn't quite work that way. There is a division of labor out there which may or may not be fair, but here it is:
Unskilled
Skilled
Talent
Your burger flippers are unskilled. The problem with that is that anyone can be unskilled at something, so there's always a large pool of people to pick from. More people than any number of unskilled jobs available. If they want jobs, they have to compete somehow. If they have no skills, then price is all they can compete on. "Retraining" an unskilled worker is pointless because, while it is relatively easy to do, you're still doing unskilled labor.
Your skilled workers are not just plumbers and electricians, but also most IT workers too. They can get screwed, but can usually find a job if they are willing to relocate. However, there is a danger that your skill itself becomes useless, or that there is a local glut of people who do what you do. Skilled workers are the most likely to be able to play the market based on re-training and movement. However, they're not immune from layoffs. Re-training will help them, but only if the re-training is close enough to what they did before where they can apply experience to that new job. Otherwise, off to the unskilled pool with you.
Finally, talent. The reason you don't "offshore" CEOs is because CEOs and rock stars and distinguished scientists are themselves considered valuable as unique individuals. They don't just have a skill, they personally have resources which are believed to improve your company aside from what they know or how many hours they work.
To be honest, there are CEOs out there who look like idiots in their field, but invariably, they're hired because of something they bring to the table. They know people, they are superb marketers, they're incredibly brilliant (even if past their prime) scientists, or they just have a brand. It doesn't have to be a CEO, it can be an asshole superstar programmer with as much gift for self-promotion as for coding.
My latest example of this is a senior executive who was at one place I used to work. He introduced a lot of interesting concepts, but didn't really develop those into a stable product. When I came on, I determined that he didn't even calculate how much his latest database was going to cost us per user. In fact, he didn't even get a price quote. In short, he was a walking disaster. Except....
Except he was a brilliant sales engineer who could talk to executives and make them interested in our product just by looking at some slides. We landed a huge deal and now we have a pile of shit, but when we get that pile of shit fixed, we're in a great place. I may have torn my hair out at the poor decisions that were made, but at least I had something to fight for, whereas we could have had a tight, perfect app with zero customers.
Or perhaps we could have had a great app and still gotten the good deal. That's the downside of talent, you don't always know if the brand is more than the marketing, but when it works... it works.
Yesterday, I watched a video from 1997 where Gil Amelio from Apple was introducing what would eventually become MacOS X. That video also had one other feature. There where two words on a slide brought everyone to a standing ovation: Steve Jobs. The talent had arrived.
Don't get me wrong, being the "talent" doesn't make you smarter or better, necessarily. It does mean you have a brand, though. And it is impossible for us to have a realistic discussion of why CEO's make what they make without understanding that they aren't paid for how much they work, or for what they know. For whatever reason, they're paid because they are who they are, and who they are is perceived to be a force multiplier of some form.
Of course, CEO's are offshored all the time. But no one calls it that, because it is a completely different process. They're business rock stars, and a lot of the same crap that goes for that type of rock star goes for them too. Including the ridiculous pay, and often the bad behavior as well.
I'm not religious, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not religious, but this kind of shit only makes me think of that famous line: "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven."
Re:I'm not religious, but... (Score:5, Informative)
yes, that's exactly what you're supposed to think. you're supposed to be consoled by the fact that you'll go to heaven when you die and that'll be better than anything the rich cunts have now. that will more than make up for the shitful life you're living. hallelujah and praise the lord. accept your lot, everyone gets what they truly deserve.
Re:I'm not religious, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
To reference Good Omens:
Listen," said Crowley urgently, "the point is that when the bird has worn the mountain down to nothing, right, then-"
Aziraphale opened his mouth. Crowley just knew he was going to make some point about the relative hardness of birds' beaks and granite mountains, and plunged on quickly.
"-then you still won't have finished watching The Sound of Music."
Aziraphale froze.
"And you'll e
If you want the H1B... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well PJ, direct from your web-site http://letpjstay.com/ [letpjstay.com]
"PJ, the co-founder of Echo Labs, always dreamed of starting a company in the United States, but if he doesn't get an H1-B visa, he'll have to move Echo Labs to Canada."
And my response to you is,
If you want the H1B, make yourself able to get the H1B. Otherwise, enjoy Canadia...
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like a douche, we don't want him
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If you want the H1B, make yourself able to get the H1B.
Thing is, there's nothing that you can do that will guarantee you an H1B, because it is a quota system. No matter how qualified you are, it's a lottery.
The guy does sound like a douche, though.
It goes both ways (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why it's morally OK to fuck over corporations.
Re: (Score:2)
Who says we need to work?
Slave labor (Score:3)
I tried, man (Score:3)
I wanted the job so hard I tried to get my DNA to change so that I was Indian but my damn lazy American genome would not cooperate.
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Why ? I would think a local employee would have an advantage over a foreign one.
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What fucking planet do you live on?
Re:I tried, man (Score:5, Informative)
They cost less money.
That's it. There is nothing else.
They're not better because they're foreign. They're "better" because they're cheaper.
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It only means that in historically short time the big part of the genome of your USA population will become Indian. Of course if your democratically elected rulers prefer business efficiency over inter-ethnic peace.
Full disclosure: I live in Russia.
Relevant 19th century Economic Quote (Score:5, Informative)
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." -- Frédéric Bastiat, 1848
H1B distorts the market - a form of slavery (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
In Canada, the moment you apply for permanent residency on your work visa (which can be done very soon, especially under the provincial nominee program), you get a blanket work permit not tying you to any particular employment, for both yourself and your spouse, that is valid for as long as they're reviewing your case.
PNP itself is a pretty good idea that I think US could use. Basically, the idea is that provinces sponsor immigration, with the stipulation that new immigrants are required to settle there, an
Heads on Pikes (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time I read one of these statements from the entitles poodles that run corporate America, I hear guillotines being sharpened.
Spoken... (Score:3)
...with the dismissive attitude of an authority figure who knows they can't be touched.
Simple Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Require all employers who hire an H1-B to pay TOP MARKET RATE for their region for the position they hire that person for.Additionally, require the employer initiate and cover all costs of Naturalization of the H1-B employee after 1 year or rescind H1-B status and send them home. A per worker fee that is large enough to cover teh cost of oversight should be required for each H1-B worker hired. This could be handled through ICE -- the same as they handle Green Card Applicants -- just perform random interviews and checks on the H1-B workers to ensure they are indeed working in the job capacity they were documented as and are indeed receiving the appropriate level of pay. Deviation should result in hefty fines the first time ($100,000 or more per incident) with severe penalties after repeated incidents ($1,000,000+ fines and revocation of all H1-B permits and inability to obtain future permits)
This way, we can be sure H1-Bs will indeed be a highly skilled and specialized worker hired because there is no local equivalent and that the H1-B worker is not exploited as a cheap labor source and given all employee accommodations as required under law.
I wonder ... (Score:5, Interesting)
So how is it that we allow foreigners to come in and work jobs with this kind of access? You want a few hundred ISIS operatives to cross the border? No problem arranging the border sensor grid outage.
Safeguards supposedly exist (Score:5, Interesting)
If a single commenter mentioned this, I didn't see it. The entity employing H1B workers is required by law to file a Labor Condition Application to ensure that they meet or exceed the prevailing wage, and an attestation designed to ensure that they are not used to break a strike nor to replace citizen workers - i.e., that the H1Bs are really needed because citizens cannot be found to do the jobs.
Obviously this does not work, or there would be little to no motivation to gratuitously replace citizens with H1B workers. What no one has satisfactorily explained to me (beyond waving the hands and mumbling "corruption") is, how is the law being flouted?
Re:Safeguards supposedly exist (Score:5, Informative)
This [youtube.com] video may help explain things a bit. Short story is that companies looking to hire H1B personnel will post these positions in two publications of "general" circulation and then if anyone does apply they will use every method of disqualifying them that is legally available. They categorize this as "good faith recruitment" to the department of labor when in reality it is anything but.
Kill H1B, make them all green cards (Score:4, Interesting)
With green cards, the employee is free to move around, and as such, they can find the best companies to work for.
That is how we get REAL competition.
Abolish the random lottery, sort by wage! (Score:5, Insightful)
The first thing they should do is to abolish the random lottery for H1B visas and grant the visas within the cap to the applicants with the highest salaries. That would help to stop companies that are abusing H1Bs for driving wages down and at the same time would make sure that if a company really really needs the skills of a specific foreigner, they could get a visa for him or her by paying a very high wage.
Ayn Rand is the New Jesus (Score:3)
Plutocrat mentality: "I've got mine now, the rest of you can grovel for scraps."
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
10/10, top libertarian trolling, would read again!
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You have zero understanding of the word libertarian.
Re:They're right you bunch of freetards (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They're right you bunch of freetards (Score:5, Insightful)
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So, if my corporation doesn't create something the customer wants, they will magically create the jobs for me to hire new employees?
Seems a bit idiotic... Hope you don't try to start your own business with that line of thinking
He's trying to fit reality (Score:4, Interesting)
Ask yourself what your high school economics class was like. Were you ever taught there was any way but free market laissez faire economics? Heck, in my class they didn't even bother demonizing it, it just wasn't taught. Libertarianism was a fait accompli. The grandparent, like a lot of
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Ask yourself what your high school economics class was like. Were you ever taught there was any way but free market laissez faire economics? Heck, in my class they didn't even bother demonizing it, it just wasn't taught. Libertarianism was a fait accompli. The grandparent, like a lot of /.ers is fighting the same uphill battle. It's the same reason the right wing just won the UK. You take control of the basic discussion and thought processes. Hell, look what we're doing. We're not talking about our standard of living, we're talking about "Job Creators". They've framed the debate in such a way that we can't even start to talk about the real issues.
Even such well known leftist bastions as the IMF [imf.org] and OECD [oecd.org] have finally come to the conclusion that income inequality hurts economic growth. Yes the almighty economic growth of the whole nation.
In Sweden we increased our financial inequality in the nineties due to our banking crisis. And even though we've had very good growth since then, the IMF believes we have lost a substantial amount due to the increase in income inequality. If we had kept our old system we would be much richer now as a country, and as
No, I'm not (Score:3)
This is always been a problem of socialists. Our rhetoric sucks because we don't have a grand ideal to lean on. It's so much _easier_ to say if we leave things alone their sort themselves out. It _sounds_ better and it _feels_ better. Sure, it's wrong.
Re:He's trying to fit reality (Score:4, Insightful)
btw, The false dichotomy you're bringing up is another example of the sort of debate framing that's going on. Nice troll too, btw.
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Re:And customers always want cheaper (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It isn't a fear of firing but the realization that unions are simply trading one management bureaucracy with another.And although they can't legally fire you for joining a union they certainly can eliminate your position and off-shore it with the net effect being the same.
Re: They're right you bunch of freetards (Score:5, Interesting)
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Facebook is continually trying to increase the number of advertisers - their customers. And an author of a book is no different than an author of software - the cost of producing the first copy is high in terms of time and labor, each additional copy is almost nothing. But, in both cases, if nobody is a customer, they haven't created a job for themselves, just a hobby. Same as all those devs who work for free on open source don't have a job developing open source.
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Customers create the jobs. If another company can undercut the price of your company, you will lose sales and employees will lose their jobs, and the other company will gain sales and hire more employees.
In the end, the customer is always right, and the customer is the one funding the ongoing business of the company. Lose too many of your customers and you go broke - see GM and Chrysler as examples.
Re:They're right you bunch of freetards (Score:4, Informative)
Historically, small businesses create more jobs than any corporation does. Mom and pop businesses. Family businesses. Local cooperatives. Some individual who sticks his neck out - and entrepreneur. Young companies create jobs - older, more established businesses do not.
http://www.sbecouncil.org/abou... [sbecouncil.org]
http://smallbusiness.house.gov... [house.gov]
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/ar... [bloomberg.com]
http://www.nber.org/digest/feb... [nber.org]
Of at least equal importance, is the question of WHEN do businesses create jobs?
Small businesses, new businesses, and startups create jobs all the time. Large corporations instead only "create" jobs in times of plenty. That is - they stand back, and watch the small players take the risks. When they see little guys making a go of it, then they either buy out the little guy, or go directly into competition with that little guy.
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people can make things and sell them to each other without corporations, they are strictly a mental construct humans use to organize their thinking, in the physical realm corporations do not actually exist.
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A "job" is any activity in which you're paid for work.
But I'll be sure to pass that on to my buddies in the housing industry that only work for several months at a time or my other friends who work as musicians "Hey, do you know you don't have a job because you're only employed for several weeks at a stretch?"
Re:They're right you bunch of freetards (Score:5, Insightful)
A buisness does not create, people do.
If you are on an island and demand things then you do it, because you want to survive. No business is there, but demand, and the job to create those things, exist. If someone who already knows how to do those things is on the island he will just do it more efficiently, and can make more money at it, but he did not create the job..
Lets do your same test. You are on an island full of nothing but farmers, and only need to grow one crop that only takes one person to create and everyone is equally good at making that crop. Is there anymore jobs for farmers? No, because demand=jobs. Add one non farmer to the mix, now there is demand for farmers, and he will pay the farmer who can best serve his needs the cheapest. He created the job.
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Knowing how to do something, in the absence of customers willing to pay for it, doesn't create jobs. Do your island test this way - he's alone on the island, he knows how to make boats and canoes and airplanes. Who's he going to sell to once he's made enough to satisfy his own demand?
Knowing how to do something, even with customers, is not by itself sufficient to create a job. I might know how to make a nuclear weapon - that doesn't mean I'm going to have any customers absent a supply of yellow cake; not o
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the customers do not actually create anything.
let's try this exercise: you are a farmer and you have extra food. there are hungry people with money. no corpoation is necessary for a business transaction to take place here.
You are stuck an island by yourself
yeah sure that argument clearly is deeply rooted in real life experience, NOT
Re:They're right you bunch of freetards (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Those "leftists" want to ensure that workers have more control over their own lives. This is inherently difficult to do when employers, both individually and collectively, have much more power than the employee.
An employee who is fired loses their livelihood.
An employer who has an employee that quits loses some of their capacity to do business. Depending upon the size of their business, that loss in capacity ranges from negligible to critical-but-not-fatal.
There are various ways to balance that power. Regulation is one means. Unionization is another approach. Of course, controlling supply (e.g. limiting H1B's) is also a valuable tool for changing the balance. Note that I say balancing power. Even many staunch union supporters would agree that giving workers more power than employers is a bad idea.
Re: They're right you bunch of freetards (Score:5, Insightful)
You did read that they had to train their replacements right? So their resume was good, the offshore peoples was not.
Re:They're right you bunch of freetards (Score:5, Insightful)
Germany has historically had extremely strong unions, and their economy is doing just fine. It isn't unionization that screws up economies, it's having overly-generous government pension programs (with people retiring in their 40s or whatever it was in Greece), too much business going on under-the-table and no taxes being paid on it (a huge problem in Greece), and people not doing much productive work in general (another big problem in Greece, where it seems most people work for the government, and the rest working in tourism, and no real industry to speak of; when was the last time you bought something that said "Made in Greece"? I think they make some cheese, and that's all I can think of.).
Re:They're right you bunch of freetards (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. The unions in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and, to a lesser extent, Norway, for example, are much stronger than the unions in the countries you mentioned. As far as Europe is concerned the countries you mention are on the lower half when it comes to union strength. (Which is clear if you notice the antics they get up to. A strong union wouldn't have to behave like that.)
So, no cigarr. Try again.
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When's the last time you opened a product labeled "Made in one of those four countries"?
Probably not too long ago. Check out Volvo cars (built in Sweden) or Volvo trucks (built in Sweden, and Swedish owned). To just name two. There are many others.
Now of course, we've been non white for the last 30 years or so. Still going strong. If you lot would just stop starting wars all over, or at least take care of the refugees we wouldn't have to. The town of Sodertalje (home to Scania) took in more Iraq refugees than all of the US of A. Combined.
Then again, if you weren't so hot on wars, the Norwegian
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Corporations in the United States are a legal invention of the citizens of the United States. They were created because the citizens believed that corporations would provide more good to the country than bad.
If it seems to the citizens that corporations are providing more bad than good, we can dissolve corporations. Now of course this will be difficult to do in the current political and social landscape. In the extremity, though, we can always return to the ways of the Founding Fathers, meet the armed goon
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If you're going to bring history into the discussion, at least don't claim corporations were invented here. There's a long history of them prior to the United States.
Re:News at 11 (Score:5, Interesting)
There are plenty of good European CEOs who are used to much lower compensation that I'm sure could do the job. Perhaps it's time to onshore the CEO position and save a few million in one shot.
Re:This Is Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
H1Bs aren't immigrants. They are foreign workers here to take jobs that no one wants. That's the "theory", anyway. In practice, they are used to import indentured servants at the cost of US citizens.
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You forgot to mention that some immigrants are carriers of values that can be incompatible with values of your Founding Fathers. Yes, you understand the meaning of the word "values".