Some jobs go to Cognizant.
By Raif Karerat
In a move that emulates the decisions made by Disney and Edison earlier this year, Cengage Learning, a multinational education content producer, told 75 of its tech workers in October they would be out of their jobs in January, reported Computer World.
Until their imminent departure from the company, not only are the outgoing workforce is expected to train their foreign replacements, but they’ve been threatened with losing their severance pay if discovered speaking to the media.
The Web-based workers that the Cengage employees are training to take over their jobs are believed to be in India.
“I think it’s what’s killing the American economy,” one of the laid off workers told Computer World. “The middle class jobs are going away.”
Cengage, in an email statement, acknowledged a reduction in the workforce of 75 positions. An additional 20 positions have been moved to IT offshore outsourcing firm Cognizant and most employees have accepted those positions, the firm said.
According to government data obtained by Computer World, Cognizant applies for thousands of H-1B visas annually, and is one of the top three users of the visa.
Cengage employees contacted by Computer World didn’t know what visa, if any, the contract workers in their offices were using. However, they attested some of the workers spoke a foreign language in the office along with English.
Offshore outsourcing is having “a fairly strong impact” on IT employment, said Victor Janulaitis, CEO of Janco, a consulting firm that studies the IT labor market.
Students coming out of college are facing trouble starting a career “and a lot of that is driven by jobs that are taken by non-U.S. nationals in our economy, and a lot of that is H-1B [visa holders],” he claimed.