Thousands of AT&T workers hunting for new jobs

Axios has a story about how

AT&T is poised to send thousands into the new year hunting for new jobs after assigning them to train their own foreign replacements, according to conversations with current and former workers and documents obtained by Axios.

Many have worked for the company for over a decade. They aren't being offered severance or early retirement, and may not easily find a comparable job elsewhere with similar pay.

...Blackwell said past contracts she's seen lead her to believe that as many as nine in 10 of those impacted by AT&T's outsourcing may end up training foreign replacements.
It's a common business model that's been used by other U.S. companies, including Disney, Verizon, Bank of America, Toys 'R' Us and Southern California Edison.

...How it works: Workers may be assured their job will not change when they are "rebadged" to work for a contractor. "The sad reality is you’ve just been terminated without your severance," said one worker Axios interviewed. "You’re at the mercy of a company that doesn’t really want you."

Workers described shock and confusion when they were told during a scripted phone call that after a decade or longer at AT&T, they'd have to work for a contractor or resign. Some were told they could not apply for other jobs inside AT&T.
Some were told they were needed for a "knowledge transfer" — then tapped to train people on work visas or overseas who would replace them.

A presentation obtained by Axios outlining the knowledge transfer process for AT&T and Accenture includes a slide on how to interact with Indian workers.
Go deeper: Trump administration denied almost a third of new H-1B visas in Q3

Read more here.

Firing Americans, but first forcing them to train the foreign workers who will replace them

Former Disney worker testifies before Congress about how Disney replaced him with a foreign worker, requiring him first to train the foreign worker or else lose his severance pay.

Is Rubio a puppet for Silicon Valley?

One of the low moments in Wednesday debate for Donald Trump was when he was questioned about his relationship with Mark Zuckerberg and the issue of immigration. Trump granted Breitbart News an interview to discuss his immigration views, and to try to recover from his debate gaffe.

BNN: Hundreds of workers at Disney were forced to train their foreign replacements. But while Florida Senator Nelson rallied to their cause, Senator Rubio did not. While Nelson has called for an investigation, Rubio has not. While Nelson has called to reduce H-1Bs, Rubio has demanded more. Senator Rubio has been the top promoter in Congress for expanding the H-1B program even though millions American tech workers are out of jobs. Rubio’s new bill triples H-1Bs and has zero protections for American workers. Advocates for tech workers said Rubio’s bill would “destroy” the U.S. tech workforce. Rubio’s bill is even endorsed by the CEO of Disney. What do you think of Rubio’s bill?

DT: It’s a disaster. It would allow any company in America to replace any worker with cheaper foreign labor. It legalizes job theft. It gives companies the legal right to pass over Americans, displace Americans, or directly replace Americans for good-paying middle class jobs. More than 80 percent of these H-1Bs are paid less than the average wage. Senator Rubio works for the lobbyists, not for Americans. That is why he is receiving more money from Silicon Valley than any other candidate in this race. He is their puppet.

BNN: During the debate, Senator Rubio listed several protections he thought American workers should receive. But the New York Times said Rubio’s bill would does the opposite of what he said, and does not contain a single one of the protections he mentioned. Instead, his bill simply triples the number of H-1B visas given as low-wage substitutes to corporations. Does Rubio have a problem with the truth?

DT: Yes, Senator Rubio is incapable of telling the truth. He should be disqualified for dishonesty alone.

BNN: Do you agree with Senator Rubio that there is a shortage of talented Americans?

DT: Rubio is dead wrong. America produces the best and brightest in the world. It’s time to stand up for own students–many of whom are racked with terrible, terrible debt and facing a disastrous job market. We are graduating two times more students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) than find jobs in those fields every year. We have a surplus of talented Americans and we need them to get jobs first.

BNN: What should happen with the Florida workers who have been replaced?

DT: I am calling TODAY on Disney to hire back every one of the workers they replaced, and I am calling on Rubio to immediately rescind his sponsorship of the I-Squared bill and apologize to every Floridian for endorsing it. I am further calling on Rubio to return the money he has received from Silicon Valley CEOs and to donate the money to a charity helping unemployed Americans whose jobs Rubio has helped to destroy.

Foreign competiton has arrived at the highest job skill levels

Dan McSwain writes an intriguing article in the San Diego Union Tribune entitled, Foreign competitors in the next cubicle.

San Diegans already know full well that foreigners are competing for their jobs. They don’t need national politicians from Donald Trump to Bernie Sanders telling them to worry.

Consider the recent blowback from layoff decisions of two prominent regional companies, Qualcomm and Southern California Edison.

The layoffs highlighted a controversial corner of immigration policy occupied by H-1B visas, which allow companies to hire foreign workers for up to six years in “specialty” occupations such as software, engineering, biotech or even fashion modeling.

Early this year, Edison began displacing about 500 information technology workers, about 100 voluntarily and 400 through layoffs. But their functions were outsourced to Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, two giant firms based in India.

Before they left, some workers were compelled to train their replacements, and some of them were foreign nationals working in the U.S.

The H-1B program “was supposed to be for projects and jobs that American workers could not fill,” one Edison worker told Computerworld, an IT news magazine. “But we’re doing our job. It’s not like they are bringing in these guys for new positions that nobody can fill. Not one of these jobs being filled by India was a job that an Edison employee wasn’t already performing.”

In response, 10 federal lawmakers asked the Department of Labor to investigate whether the H-1B program can be used to directly replace American workers. As of June, that probe was under way, according to Sens. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

Indirect replacement is no better, if you’re the one losing a job.

Last month, Qualcomm said it would cut roughly 15 percent of its global workforce, about 4,700 workers (it employs 15,000 in San Diego; 31,000 worldwide). Executives haven’t released any details, yet the news lit up social media.

“There are large, multistory apartment complexes in Kearny Mesa and Clairemont Mesa full of Qualcomm engineers from India,” said Gail Anderson, a commentator on the Union-Tribune’s digital editions. “I’d say send them all back.”

The H-1B program for temporary workers is clearly popular with employers. Federal officials in April received a record 233,000 applications, or nearly four times this year’s tech slots.

Criticism of the program comes from two directions: Many H-1B workers don’t become U.S. citizens, so hiring them ultimately transfers skills to foreign competitors.
Some pay lower wages

Meanwhile, they tend to depress wages. Regulations call for equivalent pay, but employers often use loopholes to pay at the low end of industry scales.

Others sympathize with foreign workers, saying the program amounts to indenturement because the visas belong to employers. Workers who lose jobs generally must leave the country. Such leverage adds potential for abuse.

...Canada famously uses a point system that favors people with job offers and advanced degrees. The U.S. sticks to favoring family reunification, and doesn’t focus on skills.

In San Diego, the issue is far from academic. Recent immigrants long ago came to dominate low-wage jobs in hospitality, farming and landscaping. Then they moved into middle-wage jobs in construction and manufacturing.

Now natives increasingly encounter competition from young, hungry recent graduates in professional and technical services, a sector that has added a net 24,300 jobs since 2009 in San Diego County.

Just as certainly, talented foreigners have played key roles in powering economic and technical achievement in San Diego.
Focus on innovation

At Achates Power, a startup that has invented a dramatically cleaner and more-efficient diesel engine, 10 percent of its 50 workers used H-1B visas and about one-third were born abroad, the Union-Tribune reported in 2013.

It’s easy to see why Congress is reluctant to discourage such innovation on U.S. soil. With the American economy gaining strength as the rest of the world slumps, global competition will only grow in ferocity.

Regardless of where talk of national reform ends up, the emotional power of the immigration issue seems unlikely to diminish.

For decades, workers have watched jobs disappear to foreign competitors inside and outside the U.S. And for years, pundits and politicians said boosting skills offered a path to job security.

Reality is more complex. Competition has arrived at the highest skill levels.
Read more here.

H/T 90 Miles from Tyranny

The use of H-1B visas to displace U.S. workers

Do you know about the H-1B and L-1 visa program for high-skilled immigrants? American Interest reports,

For the sponsoring company, what could be better? Management gets the compliant, lower-cost foreign labor often associated with outsourcing without having to deal with the hassles of unreliable remote monitoring or the overhead of having to open a satellite office in Bangalore.

But for foreign workers, there’s a catch: the employee is tied to the company that sponsors the visa. She cannot switch jobs, quit to found a startup, or indeed leave in protest of lower pay or dissatisfaction without forfeiting her immigration status. Moreover, upon termination, she is required to leave the country (unless, as is unlikely, she is able to find a second, established employer here in the U.S. to sponsor her directly).

...what a healthy immigration policy must not do—at either the low- or high-skilled level—is displace American jobs purely for corporate profit while at the same time creating an entire class of workers who do not enjoy the full rights of citizenship. The H-1B program as currently constituted, unfortunately, seems to do both those things. High-skilled Americans either lose their jobs or have their wages depressed, and America doesn’t get many of the usual benefits of allowing talented immigrants into our country through traditional means: the innovation, entrepreneurship, and drive that it adds to our culture and economy.

The H-1B workers at Disney might be more white-collar than the indocumentados on a California fruit farm. Likewise, the laid-off IT staff might be less down on its luck than inner-city African Americans no longer able to find first jobs in construction. But the pattern—and the problem—are unfortunately similar.

Read more here.

Disney is accused of laying off hundreds of IT workers and replacing them with H-1B foreing workers.
Patrick Thibodeau writes at Computerworld,

The use of H-1B workers to displace U.S. workers is getting more attention in Congress. In response to Southern California Edison's use of foreign labor, 10 U.S. senators recently asked three federal agencies to investigate H-1B use. But one agency, the U.S. Department of Labor, wrote back last week and told the lawmakers that large H-1B using firms "are not prohibited from displacing U.S. workers" as long as they meet certain conditions, such as paying each H-1B worker at least $60,000 a year.

Read more here.
Thanks to Instapundit