Posted on 06/09/2015 6:17:56 AM PDT by xzins
There was a lot to celebrate in the Magic Kingdom this year. The Disney Corporation had its most profitable year ever, with profits of $7.5 billion—up 22 percent from the previous year. Disney’s stock price is up approximately 150 percent over the past three years. These kinds of results have paid off handsomely for its CEO Bob Iger, who took home $46 million in compensation last year.
Disney prides itself on its recipe for “delighting customers,” a recipe it says includes putting employees first. They tout this as a key to their success in creating “a culture where going the extra mile for customers comes naturally” for employees. One method of creating this culture is referring to its employees as “cast members.” In fact, Disney is so proud of its organizational culture that it’s even created an institute to share its magic with other businesses (for a consulting fee, of course).
So, you would expect a firm that puts its employees first to share the vast prosperity that’s been created with the very employees who went above and beyond to help generate those record profits.
Well, how did Mr. Iger repay his workers—sorry, I mean cast members—for creating all this profit? Not with bonuses and a big raises. Instead, as the New York Times just detailed in a major report, he forced hundreds of them to train their own replacements—temporary foreign workers here on H-1B guestworker visas—before he laid them off.
What motivates a company to replace its American workers with H-1B guestworkers? One word: Profit. H-1B guestworkers are cheaper than American workers and don’t have much bargaining power, and any company would be foolish not to take advantage of this highly lucrative business model that has been inadvertently created by Congress and multiple presidential administrations. Of course, this business model is paid for by destroying the livelihoods and dignity of tens of thousands of American workers. The costs are also borne by American taxpayers, through foregone tax revenue and the additional social services that need to be provided for those newly unemployed American workers.
When it comes to using the H-1B to cut costs, Disney is far from an isolated case. The Disney news comes on the heels of multiple reports of corporate layoffs with H-1B replacements, at Southern California Edison, the Fossil Group in Texas, Pfizer and Northeast Utilities in Connecticut, Harley Davidson in Milwaukee and Kansas, and Cargill in Minnesota.
The full story of Disney’s injustice hasn’t yet come to light, because the company isn’t willing to speak about it, and displaced American workers are afraid to talk because they fear they won’t be hired elsewhere. Further, the Obama administration has refused to investigate any of the recent listed H-1B abuse cases. We know that Disney hired HCL, a major India-based offshore outsourcing firm, to bring in its H-1B workers. Like its rivals Tata, Infosys, and Wipro, HCL is one of the top H-1B employers in America. HCL is a publicly traded company, whose CEO Vineet Nayer once proclaimed that recent American graduates are “unemployable” because they expect too much and are too expensive to train.
HCL was the sixth largest recipient of H-1B visas in fiscal year 2013, with the Obama administration approving 1,713 H-1B visas for its workers. Like most top H-1B employers, government data reveal that HCL uses the program for cheap, temporary labor rather than as bridge to permanent immigration. In fiscal 2013 it applied for only 128 green cards, compared to its 1,713 new H-1B workers, or 7 percent of the H-1Bs it hired that year (because H-1B visas are valid for up to six years, HCL’s total H-1B workforce is much larger, but it does not disclose this information).
According to government data acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request, the median wage HCL paid those 1,713 H-1B workers was $61,984, which is essentially the entry level wage for an information technology (IT) worker, and more importantly, a 25 percent discount on the median wage of $82,710 for Computer Systems Analysts in the United States. Moreover, it’s almost certain that Disney’s 25 percent H-1B discount is an understatement, because many of the laid off Disney workers I spoke with were earning approximately $100,000, and had been employed there for many years, so they had also earned and accumulated benefits packages based on their seniority.
It’s important to point out that Disney is not an outlier, it’s the norm. Loopholes in the H-1B program make it irresistible to corporations, whose sole goal has become to maximize profits and shareholder value. Appealing to patriotism, corporate social responsibility, or even a sense of moral decency is a fool’s game. If you don’t believe me, look no further than Disney, which brags about its awards for its corporate social responsibility.
We may not like it but in the contemporary U.S. business environment, ten out of ten corporate executives will choose to replace Americans with cheaper guestworkers—it would be a dereliction of their fiduciary duty to shareholders if they failed to take advantage of this. Congress, the president, and the Departments of Labor and Homeland Security should not sit idly by while this happens. They should reform the program so it can’t be used to undercut American workers and exploit foreign workers.
In the case of Disney, I don’t see putting homos out of a job as an entirely bad thing. Which Disney is primarily an employer of. It feeds the appetite for the left to eat itself. And they will.
You don’t have much experience working with Indian HB-1s, do you?
Most likely, most of them went to college in the US and speak the King’s English fluently.
These aren’t people working at call centers inside India. These are people of a caste that allows travel, and probably education, overseas.
It’s also a fact that the justification for the visa programs has been a supposed lack of American talent, but since Disney forced the American workers who helped to generate record profits to train their replacements that is clearly a lie.
During the 2002 IT slump, I was unemployed for ten months while 500,000 H-1B visa holders were brought in. Taught me all I needed to know about that program. You're as tone-deaf as Cruz on this.
Brilliant points.
Haven’t been since late 80’s and stopped watching any movie made by them after about 2000.
“Think of H1b as a high performance vehicle” eh, so that’s to say perpetually in the shop?!
it is painfully obvious the H1B program is a means to drive down wages. I am surprised nobody has posted a sample add for an American worker (which goes vacant) as justification for the H1B visa.
I think reporters would wake up once they start being replaced by someone outside the USA that can read a teleprompter just as easy.
Do you know that the individuals are lesser trained, and don’t speak well? Do you know whether or not Disney has tried for years to attract the best and brightest from the US? Do you know the reputation Disney’s IT has had for the last couple decades, which might discourage people from wanting to work there?
No, you are just making thing up.
. Also to your argument. I'm not so sure I would use our universities and their faculty as proof of doing anything right.
I know my company recently outsourced three departments to HCL and the quality of their work sucks. It isn't about best and brightest. It is about misled management goals of reducing costs at the expense of quality.
Big chunks of Disney were unionized, at least in Florida, long ago. But not IT workers. In fact I don't know of any IT workers who are unionized, so your suggesting that they are using the outsourcing of the IT staff as a way to fight unionization makes no sense at all
> “Except H-1B is used for a lot more than such. There are legal requirements regarding H-1B not being used to displace American workers that are sidestepped. As an older American IT worker, this is a VERY important matter to me, and until Cruz addresses it, he is NOT my top choice for 2016.”
He’s already addressed it in a May 30 speech hosted by the Kuhner Report.
He is clearly not for allowing continued abuses of the H1B program. He has clearly said the H1Bs will be for DEMONSTRATED NEED only.
Those like you who are advocating a full stop on H1B because of Barack Obama’s abuses of the program are shooting yourselves in the foot.
Except that is already the case. And it is not enforced.
Those like you who are advocating a full stop on H1B because of Barack Obama’s abuses of the program are shooting yourselves in the foot.
Funny, back in 2002 Obama wasn't president. The abuses have been going on a long, long, long time. I am not shooting myself in the foot. I am trying to protect my livelihood. For me, this issue is VERY personal and Cruz is on the wrong side of it for me.
> “Speaking of math, the candidate you are slavishly supporting is going to lose, ...”
Slavishly? Really now? Anyone that supports Ted Cruz is a slave? Next you’ll be saying it’s ‘racist’ to support Ted Cruz.
Here’s reality: Americans are going to trust Ted Cruz over the likes of you eight goddam days a week!
My vote for "Idiotic Post of the Day" award.
In the ‘50’s I was a “Patrol Boy” in grade school in Port Angeles. At the end of the school year we were rewarded with a trip to Playland in Seattle.
http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/2011/05/28/seattle-history-playland-amusement-park/#12101=0
Seeing Disneyland on TV back then, it seemed like another world compared to Playland.
Time passed and I grew up. Mrs. JohnnyP and I have lived here since we got married in ‘74. We went to Disneyland once in ‘76, haven’t been back. I found out it’s just an amusement park.
those unions were entertainer/performers
Their other departments were not.
Walt Disney was screwed by the California unions and he did not hesitate to name names before congress.
Florida was not just about space to grow, it was about DE unionizing operations.
I Imagine much of these IT jobs will themselves become automated.
I wouldnt set foot on a Disney property or cruise if ya paid me in gay dineros.
There’s folks that live in Fantasy worlds and there are those who milk folks that do.. to a tidy sum, apparently..
I don’t often call for new laws (I think we could spend a session or two of congress’s time doing nothing but eliminating bad laws), but I have a simple proposal.
All publicly held businesses should disclose the total number of individuals employed under these various visa programs. (H1B isn’t the only really bad one)
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