Posted on 11/09/2015 11:39:23 AM PST by ConservingFreedom
The IT workers at Cengage Learning in the company's Mason, Ohio offices learned of their fates game-show style. First, they were told to gather in a large conference room. There were vague remarks from an IT executive about a "transition." Slides were shown that listed employee names, directing them to one of three rooms where they would be told specifically what was happening to them. Some employees were cold with worry.
The biggest group, those getting pink slips, were told to remain in the large conference room. Workers directed to go through what we'll call Door No. 2, were offered employment with IT offshore outsourcing firm Cognizant. That was the smallest group. And those sent through Door No. 3 remained employed in Cengage's IT department. This happened in mid-October.
[...] The employees were warned that speaking to the news media meant loss of severance. Despite their fears, they want their story told. They want people to know what's happening to IT jobs in the heartland. They don't want the offshoring of their livelihoods to pass in silence.
[...] Offshore outsourcing is having "a fairly strong impact" on IT employment, said Janulaitis. 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 said.
"Why are we talking about more H-1B visas for people when we have people who are unemployed?" said Janulaitis.
The IT offshore industry relies heavily on H-1B workers to deliver services, and large offshore firms, both in the U.S. and in India, are the largest users of this temporary, non-immigrant, work visa. [...]
(Excerpt) Read more at computerworld.com ...
Most of the Republican candidates want to increase this.
If they’re foolish enough to hire unqualified people let them suffer: don’t train them, just leave.
This isn’t a new thing for Southwest Ohio, as Lexis-Nexis did it in 2008-2009 for their offshoring to India/Philippines. Same threat to severance, same training requirements, yet no media coverage. On top of that, they did this while saying they wouldn’t leave Dayton like NCR did for Georgia.
That, and there’s the dubious honor of innovating in H1-b fraud - by Wright State University’s use of education status to improperly bypass the visa limits. Nice thing to say that even if one does well in school by all measures, they’ll just use fraud to avoid you anyway.
Southwest Ohio’s job market sure is taking it in the hindquarters. Short of working in a clearance-required role for Wright-Patterson, no good words can be said of the conditions of the job market.
Agile and cloud are crap. I was telling people this years ago and have been chastised for it.
Exactly, these guys fall into 3 camps... maybe a few percentage of them are good/great... maybe 10% or reasonable/capable, and the remaining 80-85% I wouldn’t want operating a garage door.
They make a mess, and eventually the company has to hire someone to come in and clean it up.
Never mind that it’s not far from Dayton and Wilmington, which still have yet to recover from NCR, GM, and DHL’s departure - jobs from all levels of skill.
I did some work with a chipset company in Maine where the workers had to train 40 chinese who would be taking their jobs
I was amazed how polite they were to the the chinese taking their jobs. In India or China, the workers would be rioting, or at least sabotaging the whole enterprise
If you like this, you’ll LOVE TPP!
It’s true. I’m in IT management and I see how the business treats IT, and it’s budget with contempt. They don’t realize more money is made with up-time...
Consequence. What happens when a promise becomes a curse.
Ohio went with Obama twice, and they have had Boehner all this time. Maybe these workers should appeal to their champions they voted in office.
Not a big fan of unions, but situations like this beg for them; and rightly so.
If they all got together and refused to work, they’d keep their jobs or get very sizable severance packages. Peer pressure would get to those few who would be reluctant not to stick with the majority.
They have alot more power than they think.
IT jobs are taking a hit due to several factors.
US businesses are looking for any way they can to reduce costs. Outsourcing and/or H1-B looks like a viable option. It generally turns out to be much more expensive in my experience. Government mandates are strangling US businesses. Much of what drives outsourcing is a result of an overreaching government.
To be blunt another reason is US universities do an awful job of training programers. With the volume of IT workers needed, I have no doubt companies are having trouble finding US applicants proficient in the skills they need. At the same time, coders who learn to program on their own usually have huge knowledge gaps and bad habits that make employing them very expensive We need a better way to train IT workers.
As more and more of our lives are directly touched by software, I fear this will only get worse before it gets better. What we DON’T need is more government interference. A return to the free marketis the answer .
It’s flat out against the law to replace an American worker with an H1B worker.
http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/FactSheet62/whdfs62N.htm
How do they get away with this ?
It’s only a matter of time before some pasty middle manager tasked with delivering this type of news gets a first rate beatdown.
how polite
We Americans.
After the company I worked at, my software development group was merged with one from the other company in another state, not another country half way around the world. It was like trying to merge two churches from different denominations. It never worked.
That can't be a valid argument in this case and many others people share. The US workers that are being laid off are so proficient that they can train their replacements. The problem is that the foreign replacements are mostly much worse at programming.
There was a stat last month that somewhere around 50% of US workers with STEM degrees can't find tech jobs. And you know what? The STEM programs I saw in the public schools are pretty good.
Don’t forget that the ACA requires insurance companies to report a Medical Loss Ratio of 85%. This means that 85% of every premium dollar must go directly to pay claims, leaving only 15% for administration (including IT, infrastructure, etc.) Failure to comply results in penalties.
Not excusing anything here, just wanted to add this to the discussion. More government manipulation of the insurance industry.
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