Blumenthal: Eversource Energy in CT allegedly used visa workers to displace Americans.
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW YORK: The Hartford, Connecticut-based Eversource Energy, which was earlier known as Northeast Utilities, joined the ranks of some other big corporate entities, including giant utility company, the California-based Southern California Edison, and entertainment behemoth Walt Disney World, in allegedly using India-based outsourcing companies Infosys and Tata Consulting Services, to have H-1B visa and other visa workers displace American workers.
Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal wrote to US Attorney General Loretta Lynch last week, demanding the Justice Department to investigate allegations that Eversource Energy fired 200 American or permanent resident workers in Connecticut and Massachusetts, in 2014, after having those workers – under the threat of losing severance pay and a signed confidentiality agreement not to talk of their ordeal – train their replacement H-1B and L-1B workers from India.
“Eversource seems to be just the latest example of American companies abusing nonimmigrant worker visa programs and harming American workers by outsourcing jobs,” Blumenthal said in the letter to Lynch.
“Such apparent abuses are the reason I have helped lead the fight to reform the H-1B and L-1B programs by co-sponsoring bipartisan legislation that would prohibit companies from replacing American workers with nonimmigrant visa holders,” Blumenthal said. “The attempt to coerce the laid-off employees into remaining silent about their treatment is deeply troubling.”
Blumenthal had in a similar letter, expressed his outrage to Thomas J May, CEO of Eversource Energy.
The issue of American workers having to train their replacement H-1B visa and L-1B workers, before being fired, is now a class action lawsuit against Walt Disney World, filed recently by two former employees, Leo Perrero and Dena Moore.
Read that story here: http://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2016/01/25/h-1b-visa-is-abused-claims-lawsuit-by-former-disney-tech-workers/
The reprehensible practice needs to be ended; read that column here:
But the abuse of temporary visas through outsourcing companies to fire long-standing workers to record better bottom line is nothing new. It has seemingly continued unabated for a decade and a half.
Several companies recently have come under the scanner for this practice termed ‘knowledge transfer’ which has caused much consternation in the American workforce, and forced legislators like Blumenthal to take up the cause of long-entrenched workers being displaced by temporary workers.
Read an earlier story: http://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2015/10/01/h-1b-l-1b-visa-workers-from-tcs-accenture-gobble-up-jobs-at-toys-r-us-new-york-life/
But the practice seemed to have been popular as long as 14 years ago, in 2002.
A letter to the editor on Madison.com, by a reader and former American employee, who was fired, gives insight into a modus operandi which has shockingly continued for long without any repercussions.
Michael Emmons, from Longwood, Florida, wrote: “In 2002, our entire IT dept at Siemens ICN in Lake Mary, Florida, was ordered to train our foreign replacements. Our replacements were TATA India Inc. employees, H-1B and L-1B visa holders. Once the replacements were trained, the well-educated American employees were given a small severance and a pink slip while foreigners on visas lived and worked in Lake Mary, collecting lower salaries. How is an American supposed to compete?”
Emmons added: “We contacted our member of Congress and two senators. Neither senator cared. Our congressman said he’d help but not six weeks after we contacted his office he was cashing campaign checks from Siemens. Do you think he cares more for his corporations or his constituents?”
Emmons informed that via the AFL-CIO, a CD of that sordid story of lay-offs was distributed to every member of the House of Representatives.
In a report in ComputerWorld, last year, Ron Hira, a public policy professor at Howard University, and a researcher on offshore outsourcing, spoke out against the practice of ‘knowledge transfers’.
“…Adding to the injustice, American workers are being forced to do ‘knowledge transfer,’ an ugly euphemism for being forced to train their foreign replacements. Americans should be outraged that most of our politicians have sat idly by while outsourcing firms have hijacked the guest worker programs…The majority of the H-1B program is now being used to replace Americans and facilitate the offshoring of high wage jobs,” Hira said.
Read an interview with Ron Hira: http://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2014/06/12/increases-h-1b-visas-without-reform-risk-racial-hatred-dr-ron-hira/
The Justice Department last year gave a clean chit to some major Indian outsourcing companies for their use of temporary work visas to provide services to American corporates. They have played by the rules set by the USCIS, deemed the Justice Department.
However, how to use these outsourcing companies which provides cheaper tech solutions and workers, without hurting and humiliating the American workforce, is something that American companies need to consider when they plan the next round of big layoffs.
(Sujeet Rajan is Editor-in-Chief, The American Bazaar. Follow him on twitter: @SujeetRajan1)
3 Comments
If Americans, or those of any other nationality, were brought to THEIR country and THEIR jobs taken …the I am betting the ‘invaders’ wouldn’t live long. I had no idea this has gone on for so long. And especially at Disney. Shame on all involved in taking jobs. Or outsourcing. }@$+@r¿$ !
As for me I will say…’time to go home!’
My mother’s company was bought out by a German company decades ago…and the employee pension fund was plundered/robbed by the German purchaser…taking their jobs AND their retirement. I thought that an isolated incident. But it’s not.
As much as I hate to say this, this is a correct statement. The H1B visa program has actually been used to replace American workers with Foreign workers since the late 60’s or the early 70’s.
I remember watching a piece 60 minutes did a piece on how the program was being abused back then. I was just out of high school but could not understand how this was not number one story all over the media.
Well over the years I have discovered that the American people do not pay attention unless it directly impacts them. Now that is has impacted a vast number of American citizens it seems it may be too late.
Only when the people in the media begin to be replaced by foreign journalists will they see the light, but by then it’s lights out for all of us.
The United states of America should be a sovereign nation, whose citizens are the primary concern for those elected to represent the American citizens not foreign workers.
The question that the media should be asking the American citizens is; Are we a sovereign nation or just an employment office for the worlds cheapest labor pool?
Halliburton has been doing the same for years — Hiding the facts using layers of contracting firms