Hillary Clinton has stayed silent on the H-1B visa issue.
AB Wire
Vermont Senator and Democratic contender for nominee for the presidential elections Bernie Sanders came down hard on The Walt Disney Co. and its use of H-1B visas, at a campaign rally in Anaheim, California, on Tuesday.
Sanders told the crowd that the company “pays its workers [at the park] so low that many are forced to live in motels because they can’t afford a decent place to live. Meanwhile, Disney made a record breaking profit of nearly 3 billion dollars last quarter,” reported Variety.
Sanders also spoke about the company firing about 250 information technology workers and replaced them with those holding H-1B visas.
“Disney replaced 250 workers with low-wage foreign workers who came in what is called the H-1B program,” said Sanders, to the affirming cheers of the crowd in Anaheim. So in order to save money, what they did is replace workers,” said Sanders, reported Computerworld. “They got rid of them and brought in other people and had the tech workers train the other people.”
Sanders contrasted the layoffs to the $46.5 million in compensation of Disney CEO Robert Iger, although he did not cite Iger by name, reported Variety.
Sanders said that Disney was “an example of what we are talking about when we talk about a rigged economy.”
He said that it “would be nice” for Disney to move its manufacturing of consumer products like T-shirts to the United States, rather than have them produced with cheap labor in China. He accused Disney of “exploiting people in China,” reported Variety.
California goes to the primaries on June 7th.
Computerworld noted that Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, who, along with Sanders, is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, has been silent on the H-1B issue during this campaign.
It will be hard to avoid the high-skilled immigration issue in California. It’s a top policy issue for Silicon Valley’s tech giants. But the state is also the home of some high-profile displacements, notably Southern California Edison’s use of H-1B contractors and the subsequent cutting of some 500 IT workers. The parent company of the Los Angeles Times, a critic of Edison and the H-1B program, has since hired one of the same India-based contractors the utility used. The newspaper chain’s IT employees are training their replacements, reported Computerworld.
A Disney spokesman responded to Sanders’ comments: “Mr. Sanders clearly doesn’t have his facts right. The Disneyland Resort generates more than $5.7 billion annually for the local economy, and as the area’s largest employer has added more than 11,000 jobs over the last decade, a 65% increase. These numbers don’t take into account our $1 billion expansion to add a Star Wars-themed land, which will create thousands of additional jobs across multiple sectors.”
The spokesman also addressed the issue of H-1B visas: “Here are the facts: We rehired more than 100 people impacted by our Parks IT reorganization, have hired more than 170 other US IT workers roles and are currently recruiting candidates to fill more than 100 IT positions.”
1 Comment
The Disney spokesman seems to be selling snake oil. He speaks to Bernie not having the facts straight but doesn’t address any of his supposedly disputed facts. Sanders didn’t say Disney doesn’t have jobs or that they are not part of the local economy. And having other IT positions doesn’t mean they didn’t still farm off 250 of them. It’s like a child abuser saying, “Yeah, but I make them lunches.”