Is getting cheaper labor the crux of the matter?
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: As the H1-B visa controversy in California continues to simmer toward an inevitable boiling point, multi-billion dollar utilities provider Southern California Edison (SCE) has stoked the fire by outsourcing the jobs of hundreds of longtime employees.
At least 400 American IT workers at Edison have had their positions terminated in recent months and the majority of their replacements emigrated from India.
According to Ron Hira, co-author of the book “Outsourcing America,” for The Hill’s congressional blog, most are employed by the two leading India-based outsourcing firms, Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys.
Adding insult to the injustice of losing their jobs, the SCE workers are being forced to train their replacements under the threat of losing their duly owed severance package and eligibility for unemployment insurance.
“We were told if we wanted our severance that we were required to train our replacement,” a multiple-decades long-veteran employee of SoCal Edison told Breitbart News on the condition of anonymity. She was terminated this year from her IT position and replaced with an H1-B worker.
Hira spoke with several Edison workers, who revealed they were, “demoralized; in disbelief; beyond furious; down in the dumps; feeling anguish; depressed; feeling dehumanized; feeling humiliated; worrying about the future; [and] worrying about paying the bills.”
At the crux of the matter seems to be the issue of bottom-line for companies in the US: to replace longtime workers who command higher salaries with new workers on H1-B visa on much lower salaries.
Increasing the number of H1-B visas in the U.S. is a move that has been largely supported by the Democratic Party and also has backing from established Republicans like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. It’s also likely to become a hot-button issue in the 2016 GOP presidential primaries.
Civil rights stalwart Rev. Jesse Jackson is one of the only figures on the left voicing his disapproval of H1-B expansion.
“We need to get rid of H1-B workers,” Jackson said in a recent interview with Fortune Magazine. “There are Americans who can do that work, and H1-B workers are cheaper and undercut wages.”
As the landscape of big business and information technology diversifies and continues to look ever-different from that of decades past, overarching demographics in the United States are also shifting.
For almost two centuries, “from the time of George Washington’s presidency to the election of Ronald Reagan,” Caucasians of European descent made up at least 80% of the population, according to figures listed by The Economist. That share is currently below two-thirds, with the white majority slated for relegation to minority-status by 2044.
7 Comments
If we had a real president with balls he would declare all H1B terrorists and lock them up in prison like we did to the japs in WWII. Of course our president is a globalist who Hates whites and is transforming the US into a 3rd world sh#t hole.
be craeful, all H1-B workers abide by US law, and pay taxes. They might sue you for such distasteful comment.
Immigrants are the reason you have a job
The governemnt should make a rule that first a certain percentage of Americans be employed before H1B are recruited.If this continues there will be a backlash against the H1B workers.
why cant there be a backash against Deprtment of Labor who approves the LCA (Labor condition application ) for all H1-B petitions ?
In the LCA an employer clearly states prevailing wage for particular geography and job, and the wage to be actually paid to the worker. The worker must be paid more than prevailing wage for the LCA to be approved by Dept of Labor.
Without LCA, H1-B petition can not be filed.
Did it ever occur to you to knowck on the door of Dept of Labor to revise the prevailing wage data ? OR if you disagree, could it be that US citizens are paid much more than prevailing wage, in which case their salaries must be brought down ?
Some food for thought for you.
It’s a cookbook!
The only time this concern will ever be newsworthy is when the “guest workers” are in line to replace Brian Williams, Rachel Maddow, Wolf Blitzer, Maureen Dowd, and Thomas Friedman. Until then, it only “happens to somebody else.”