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During this recession, I like many people working in technology, had a very difficult time finding work, but finally got back on my feet (though in a contract-only position with no benefits).
Now I am working in an American multinational here in the United States, and I find that every last person working for me is an H1B temp work visa holder. There are zero Americans on my staff. In addition to that, we recently had to fill 3 more headcount in my group. My boss instructed me that due to 'budget' that we were to go to our India sourcing department and they would arrange for contractors to be sent in from offshore (India). It would take about 1 month for their visas to be arranged and for them to be on site (in Raleigh North Carolina). Though our Applicant tracking system is overflowing with applications by Americans (including probably some of my own old ones), we didn't even look at those before bringing in the H1Bs. The corporate law firm arranges this, gives the 'no Americans can be found' stamp of approval and the temps are flown in with expedited Visas (H1B or other temp type visas that they use until the H1B is approved). I mentioned this to a couple of my coworkers, and I was discretely told to be quiet about it if I knew what was good for me and didn't want to 'expire' myself.
At the same time, while I was on a business trip, I found that several others in lower / mid management Americans in the firm, mostly in their 50s all have recent college grad kids living at home with them, unable to find any work or just working at the mall with their university degrees in solid subjects. It dawned on me then, that actually we had no American recent grads in the entire company. That virtually all the lower 2 to 3 rungs of company positions (programmers, BAs, SMEs..etc) were H1Bs (again, almost exclusively from India).
Basically the modus operandi is to first hire in India (we have a big India offshoring center), if that is not possible, bring someone from India to the United States, and if that is not possible either, then finally look at the Applicant Database and see if we can find an American for the role as a last resort. As a result, most junior roles (that are the easiest to fill), go to H1B and other temp visa holders. American new grads or unemployed won't even get interviews.
Talking to others in the area at the local linux group, it turns out virtually every other tech company in the area is doing this, and not only here either. Boston, Herndon Virginia tech corridor, the suburban silicon valley, it is the same story everywhere from coast to coast.
This is essentially visa fraud on a massive scale, probably criminal and basically theft from Americans who are legally supposed to get those jobs first. Right now, we don't even read the US applicant database when hiring in the US for most roles. Other firms here don't either from what others working in them tell me.
If you are working in a large corporate tech environment in the United States, you probably know exactly what I am talking about (reply and say 'yep' if you do). There are probably even some sitting within a couple cubes from you while there are fewer and fewer Americans working as they get 'replaced' around you.
I concluded that if this was not happening, the recession in the middle class would have been over years ago, and we would now be in a very healthy broad based recovery affecting everyone with increasing wages and improving benefits as the unemployed found good jobs with benefits, shortages would lead to new grads getting work, buying homes and filling them with furniture rather than living with their parents in their childhood bedrooms..etc.
What is the solution? A typical union is not the solution (I don't want one anyways, they often bring different kinds of problems). Writing to congress won't help (since corruption of congress by tech corp lobby corporate donations is what brought this about in the first place). Staging an annual 'Day of Action' protesting in front of tech company clients (i.e. if they use Oracle, in front of their clients retail stores) with your Guy Fawkes mask. Other industrial action like is common in European countries? A broad employee based (but somehow secret so we don't get laid off for being 'low performers' when it is discovered we are in it?) political pressure group? Anonymous? College grad groups (since they are the ones most affected by this)?
I'd like to hear the ideas and thoughts of the people on this forum of what to do, what action can be taken to reverse this. It is criminal what is happening in this country in this regard and I don't think we should stand for it.
Ed
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @06:22PM
Corporations[...]weren't meant to be in the interest of employees
Now, change "employees" to "worker-owners" and you can remove the "n't".
Worker cooperatives. [google.com]
USA Workers Occupy Their Factory Twice Then Incorporate A Worker-Run Cooperative [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [libcom.org]
Worker-Owner Cooperatives Taking Root in the US [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [dissidentvoice.org]
How America's Largest Worker-Owned Co-Op Lifts People Out of Poverty [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [commondreams.org]
People need to stop thinking of themselves as serfs in the service of overlords.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 19 2014, @05:23AM
Somewhere in there, a glimmer of a good idea (the employee-owned corporation) is dying under an avalanche of partisan language. This is something that the energetic left today doesn't understand: it comes across as a throwback to a largely industrial era (globalism killed that) and as a threat (words like "occupy" are militaristic). I understand that this kind of rhetoric is good for whipping up the base, but there's so much more out there that can be used effectively to get across the idea of employee ownership and to do so in a way that doesn't alienate conservatives but gets them to think about the idea rather than rejecting it at first blush.
Consider Florida: it's so Republican (especially thanks to the old folks -- Republican donors) that the Democratic candidate for governor is the former Republican governor. They also have what's probably the most successful employee-owned corporations, Publix grocery. It's the default grocer for Florida, almost a monopoly. Completely employee-owned, with generous benefits and great working conditions, and tremendous social-welfare programs like free antibiotics and diabetic supplies. Somehow, they manage to flourish in one of the most rabidly right-wing swamps of the South, and their approach wins loyalty from the conservatives. They manage to succeed without invoking occupation and factory conditions and all the imagery that has been poisoned by decades of anti-left media: they're the friendly grocer up the street, a bunch of clean-cut kids who always smile and ask if you'd like help taking your groceries out to the car.
Yin, yang; it's important in rhetoric to be able to adapt, not just oppose.