Disney employees had to train their replacements after they were laid off

[ArwenMarie]

Well good luck with it.

My company sent a slew of IT jobs to India and ended up bringing all of the work back to the U.S.

Not to blame the individual Indian workers, but it was a total disaster for various reasons and ended up costing us millions in fees refunded back to our clients.

 

[Josh Hendy]

Well good luck with it.

My company sent a slew of IT jobs to India and ended up bringing all of the work back to the U.S.

Not to blame the individual Indian workers, but it was a total disaster for various reasons and ended up costing us millions in fees refunded back to our clients.

Evidently, Disney got around that problem of sending work to India and it not being done properly by bringing the Indian workforce into the USA and making sure that they were 100% fully trained by the Americans they replaced.

Someone mentioned how Canada was also examining its equivalent of the H-1B visa program, because of abuses made against the visa workers. I don't know what's going on with that but in the past I've read allegations in hi-tech journals that H-1B visa holders were extorted by supervisors in the insourcing companies who facilitated the visas. They were told, "You're relatives in India will deliver part of your paycheck in cash to my relatives in India every month or else I will give you a bad employment rating and you will be deported."

I'm not talking about Disney just making an observation ... once you get into lawbreaking in an organized, institutional way, then all kinds of other rackets and lawbreaking are bound to occur.

 

[AtlantaDisneyDreamer]

Every successful business wants the cheapest, smartest, hardest working, most skilled workers. Why would anyone want to pay someone $100,000 a year to do a job, when someone else is willing to do it just as well for $60,000?

Most of us shop around for the best and cheapest service providers to handle, for example, our lawn care, take care of our children, and provide us with utilities, cable service, Internet service, etc. Why wouldn't business do the same on a larger scale? Lots of folks hire foreign workers to do these jobs (well, lawn care and child care), because they are skilled and will do it inexpensively.

As a proud, hardworking American, what scares me most about this is not that businesses choose to look overseas for employees, but that more and more businesses managers (and people managing their own homes) believe that the cheapest, smartest, hardest working, most skilled workers are not Americans. Could it be that, in some cases, they actually have a point?

I am not insulting Americans. I am quite patriotic and, frankly, we have some of the coolest citizens on the planet. But we are expensive, and some of us have come to expect a lot of pay for a little work.

We obviously have a problem, and it is easy to blame this on "greedy corporate America," but we might need to reevaluate our own work ethic and attitude. How can we make ourselves more attractive to employers? What can we do to show employers that we are worth the salaries we demand?

 

[Castle2Castle]

As a proud, hardworking American, what scares me most about this is not that businesses choose to look overseas for employees, but that more and more businesses managers (and people managing their own homes) believe that the cheapest, smartest, hardest working, most skilled workers are not Americans. Could it be that, in some cases, they actually have a point?

Survey says...

 

[jerivera]

Every successful business wants the cheapest, smartest, hardest working, most skilled workers. Why would anyone want to pay someone $100,000 a year to do a job, when someone else is willing to do it just as well for $60,000?

Most of us shop around for the best and cheapest service providers to handle, for example, our lawn care, take care of our children, and provide us with utilities, cable service, Internet service, etc. Why wouldn't business do the same on a larger scale? Lots of folks hire foreign workers to do these jobs (well, lawn care and child care), because they are skilled and will do it inexpensively.

As a proud, hardworking American, what scares me most about this is not that businesses choose to look overseas for employees, but that more and more businesses managers (and people managing their own homes) believe that the cheapest, smartest, hardest working, most skilled workers are not Americans. Could it be that, in some cases, they actually have a point?

I am not insulting Americans. I am quite patriotic and, frankly, we have some of the coolest citizens on the planet. But we are expensive, and some of us have come to expect a lot of pay for a little work.

We obviously have a problem, and it is easy to blame this on "greedy corporate America," but we might need to reevaluate our own work ethic and attitude. How can we make ourselves more attractive to employers? What can we do to show employers that we are worth the salaries we demand?

... you're seriously comparing Information Technology professionals, some with a few dozen years of experience, most likely having college educations and advanced degrees, to "lawn care, babysitting, cable repair guy, internet install guy"? Seriously???

Would you hire Mary, the 40 year old nanny, to do your taxes, represent you in court, diagnose your disease, draw up the plans for your home, operate the electric grid, etc?

A more appropriate comparison would be, would you hire Vijay, the 22 year old grad with 0 experience, to do your taxes, represent you in court, diagnose your disease, draw up the plans for your home, operate the electric grid, etc? Or better yet, would you hire 250 Vijays, and let go of everyone else. That's what's happening here. And not because Vijay's better. But because Vijay's cheaper.

 

[Castle2Castle]

A more appropriate comparison would be, would you hire Vijay, the 22 year old grad with 0 experience, to do your taxes, represent you in court, diagnose your disease, draw up the plans for your home, operate the electric grid, etc? Or better yet, would you hire 250 Vijays, and let go of everyone else. That's what's happening here. And not because Vijay's better. But because Vijay's cheaper.

Not necessarily. A February report suggests that Vijay could be better. And a report from 2013 suggests H-1B visa workers are not necessarily cheaper either.

And since I'm just repeating myself from one of the other topics on this same subject, I'll go ahead and include for future discussion in this topic that not all workers were asked to train replacements and not all people are doing the same jobs as were done before. There were 250 employees reportedly fired, 120 hired back and a net gain of 70 new tech jobs created. Disney also reportedly increased the IT focus on innovation and new capabilities from 28% to 65%.

 

[Josh Hendy]

These discussions of work ethic and business ethics are all very interesting.

There are reasons why hiring full-time US citizen employees is not so desirable any more which have nothing to do with productivity and work ethic, and everything to do with federal regulations. Like the so-called affordable care act. Yes, even H-1B workers are supposed to be covered under the ACA. But if it's suddenly a lot more expensive to hire any full time employee due to government-mandated benefits, where are you going to find savings? In salaries. How do you shed salaries while keeping the same number of employees? But turning $100k IT jobs into $60k jobs through the magic of (allegedly) false H-1B applications which the government has apparently decided to accept unquestioningly, if not with a wink and a chuckle. Not corruption really ... just giving back to big businesses with one hand what they took away with the other.

And sad to say, the cost increases due to ACA that have been seen so far are ---nothing--- compared to the cost increases that are coming down the pike. I heard. If you think that Disney doesn't have an eye on these numbers then ... ah ... never mind.

In other words, I don't think that the real problem is the work ethic. It's not even a problem with business ethics, if you think that fiduciary duty to shareholders gives a certain license to exploit as many "everyone does it" loopholes in federal regulations as possible.

 

[TwoMisfits]

H1-B visas really just have to be eliminated or made so undesirable that they go back to their original intent of ONLY bringing in that talent which can't be found in the US (like an Albert Einstein). Too many companies have learned that they can have their cake (the protections of doing business in the US - good infrastructure, fair laws, no takeover threat from government, etc) and eat it, too (lower wage foreign employees who literally can't leave them without being deported).

Should we blame Disney - hell yes! But, we've got many other companies to blame, too. The fix at this point has to be at the political level, like a huge rollback of the program to a max of 1000 visas per year as well as a huge additional cost to use it - say a $50K or 50% of previous wage fee per visa per year (whichever is higher), indexed to average national wage increases with a minimum 1% fee increase per year, with all proceeds of the fees going to unemployment insurance, SSI disability, and employee retraining.

If companies want foreign employees, they should operate where those employees are or they should fully pay for it.

 

[jerivera]

Not necessarily. A February report suggests that Vijay could be better. And a report from 2013 suggests H-1B visa workers are not necessarily cheaper either.

Could. Not is. That just about says it all, does't it? Maybe he/she will be better... in 10, 20, or 30 years. It's not about whether he/she is better now. It's about how he/she is cheaper now.

That salary study is about as 50,000 foot high level as it can possibly get. It compares all US computer occupations salaries vs H1-B visa salaries. That's like saying all lawyers, accountants, salesmen, or doctors in their respective industries and/or specialties get paid the same.

I'm pretty sure if you checked pre & post layoff salaries of US employees vs H1B replacements, the salary will tell an incredibly different picture (yet totally expected) that what that study shows. I've yet to read/hear/other anything about how 100 US engineers at a company who earned $100,000 (average) were replaced by 100 H1-B visa engineers earning $120,000 (average). Ever. And I'm pretty sure I never, ever, ever will. Because if it were true, we'd all have heard about it now as defense exhibit #1 of H1-B visas.

H1-B visas really just have to be eliminated or made so undesirable that they go back to their original intent of ONLY bringing in that talent which can't be found in the US (like an Albert Einstein). Too many companies have learned that they can have their cake (the protections of doing business in the US - good infrastructure, fair laws, no takeover threat from government, etc) and eat it, too (lower wage foreign employees who literally can't leave them without being deported).

Agree 100%. H1-B visas are being abused by the 100s of thousands. But politicians line their pockets from companies who love the cheap labor. Great for them. Sucks for us, though.

 

[Castle2Castle]

Could. Not is. That just about says it all, does't it? Maybe he/she will be better... in 10, 20, or 30 years. It's not about whether he/she is better now. It's about how he/she is cheaper now.

Yes, in contrast to making a claim of certainty with no corroboration, I provided a source for information and correctly identified a possible scenario. Not recognizing or not acknowledging your claim as only one possibility does not in turn make it a certainty.

That salary study is about as 50,000 foot high level as it can possibly get. It compares all US computer occupations salaries vs H1-B visa salaries. That's like saying all lawyers, accountants, salesmen, or doctors in their respective industries and/or specialties get paid the same.

First of all, it's a link to a summary of their report with a summarized table. They also compared the results using more detailed occupational classifications in the gated full report and still reached the same conclusion. But even if they were only looking at that high level, it would still carry implications as to just who companies are hiring through the program. If it's mostly 22 year-olds with no experience to grab cheap labor, they should be pulling the average H-1B wages down, not up.