Bay Area tech company caught paying imported workers $1.21 per hour

Engadget ^ | 23 October 2014 | Ben Gilbert

[Lorianne]

Ever heard of Electronics for Imaging? We hadn't either until this morning, but it's apparently a multimillion dollar, multinational, public corporation based out of Fremont, California. And the United States Department of Labor just caught EFI red-handed in an investigation, which found that "about eight employees" were flown in from India to work 120-hour weeks for $1.21 per hour. EFI apparently thought it was okay to pay the employees the same wages they'd be paid in India (in Indian rupees). Here's the unbelievably crazy sounding quote EFI gave to NBC's Bay Area affiliate: "We unintentionally overlooked laws that require even foreign employees to be paid based on local US standards."

Just so we're clear: is there anyone reading this who doesn't know that any person working in the United States is legally required to be compensated according to United States laws?

Alberto Raymond, an assistant district director with the US Department of Labor told NBC, "It is certainly outrageous and unacceptable for employers here in Silicon Valley to bring workers and pay less than the minimum wage." And that applies to EFI especially, which posted just shy of $200 million in revenue in its last financial quarter. EFI is publicly traded on the NASDAQ exchange, and the company's in the business of computer peripherals (mainly printer-based stuff).

The eight employees are being paid $40,000 in owed wages; they were reportedly installing computer systems at the company's headquarters. EFI was charged $3,500 -- yes, seriously -- for being at fault.

[fuzzylogic]

Something doesn’t add up here.

First, “flown in” to do something for a very temporary period (couple of weeks) happens all the time within multinational corps. You don’t change their pay but you will be paying their travel expenses. I don’t see enough details here.

Plus 120 hrs/week? How is that possible? That’s over 17hrs/day 7 days/week.

So it depends on the visa type issued. If they were “flown in” on H1B visas to work for an extended time where they’re expected to pay for their own living expenses, then yes, this is plainly wrong.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Make that $3000.

[camle]

17+ hours a day, seven days a week.

[Buckeye McFrog]

I know. There are stories about a very prominent Fortune 1000 company here in Pittsburgh doing this. Had up to twelve guys sharing a fleabag apartment until the Government busted them.

[jennychase]

Even after paying minimum wages , salary in India, fine etc, company is able to save big chunk of money. These workers were installing network, routers, computer etc. Minimum rate for these kind of jobs are $70+ hours, not adding providing insurance etc.

[Blood of Tyrants]

It ought to be illegal to import third would workers to undercut Americans.

[Lorianne]

I don’t see why anyone would do this. It would be a tremendous expense.

Hiring from overseas goes on in many formerly good paying fields, engineering, architecture ... virtually any design field, medical imaging, bookkeeping, even paralegal work. Any field where the end product can be transmitted electronically employers are hiring foreign workers in their home countries and paying prevailing wages there. No need for a ship or visas or anything

This is why a college degree has become worth less and less especially in professions. You are literally competing with everyone in the world who can do the same kind of work. There are many talented and smart people in other countries. All they need is a computer connection.

[Lorianne]

I see. So they were doing actual physical work and had to be on site.

But there are many more who don’t have to be physically here to do work.

[Beagle8U]

“Plus 120 hrs/week? How is that possible? That’s over 17hrs/day 7 days/week.”

My guess is they worked 80 hours, and with overtime pay it amounted to 120 hours pay. Five 16 hour days would do it.

[vpintheak]

This is why Republicans won’t really take a stand on illegals, businesses is in their pockets. Dims get the votes, repubs got the political donations.

[Graybeard58]

120 hours per week seems a mite far fetched, there are only 148 hours in a 7 day week. If they spent all their off time doing nothing but sleeping, they would spend just 4 hours per day sleeping. How about time to eat, bathe, etc.?

[Tenacious 1]

Maybe they were “salaried” employees. I are one of those. What they say you make per hour and what you actually make per hour are routinely irreconcilable.

j/k

[familyop]

"Something doesn’t add up here...Plus 120 hrs/week? How is that possible? That’s over 17hrs/day 7 days/week."

I've done it for the Army. It's possible. It leaves almost seven hours each day for grooming and work. I've also done two civilian jobs at a time on a much worse schedule.

Lorianne, they were doing equipment installation. That's why they were flown here to do it.

On the strangeness of spending so much to get them here for a very short term job and back, it's not all about money. It's about pride, vanity and generalized contempt against a perceived employee class. I've seen it from the bottom of the inside for nearly 40 years.

Equipment installation, operating system installs, configs and code development are easy. The social games so important to many companies are not so easy. Some bosses will throw money out the window in favor of odd social preferences (thus, the ongoing business and general economic trend). [I've done many temp jobs over quite a few years, even for anti-American foreign CEOs on American soil.]

It's part of the default process and decline.

[familyop]

Little correction of my comment here:

It leaves almost seven hours each day for grooming and sleep.

[familyop]

"120 hours per week seems a mite far fetched, there are only 148 hours in a 7 day week. If they spent all their off time doing nothing but sleeping, they would spend just 4 hours per day sleeping. How about time to eat, bathe, etc.?"

For three months, I've

* Worked over 17 hours per day, every day (except for one one-and-a-half day period in three months).

* Less than seven hours sleeping (no sleep at all for one week).

* Eaten meals in five minutes.

* Put on gear and stood in formation within five minutes.

* Showered, shaved and put on gear in less than fifteen minutes.

For a shorter period of weeks, people are capable of working much tougher schedules than that (done that, too).

The funny thing about a multinational transition to slavery, is that many folks see things in general as being hunky dory, until the trend works its way up to their own positions.

[Half Vast Conspiracy]

There are 168 hours in a week.

[Half Vast Conspiracy]

An entire week with no sleep? C’mon.

[Graybeard58]

There are three kinds of people in the world, those who are good at math and those who aren’t.

[familyop]

"An entire week with no sleep? C’mon."

Yes, and many hours of that with hard physical training. Most people go crazy during a week with no sleep. We were "checked to make sure that" our "heads were screwed on right" (words from a drill sergeant). Those who did something nutty were sent home (those repeatedly trying to put a coin into a tree, rifle butting another trainee to the back of the head, etc.).

I've done the same with multiple civilian jobs and not more than an hour nap or so between shifts (no time for REM, e.g., driving limos over night, selling auto parts and fast food during day/night shifts). Tech. was winding down at the end of the '90s. Even the office admin. jobs slowed down (did many of those between tech. jobs during the '90s).

About five years ago, I was in my fifties and digging with a pickaxe under a house at somewhere in a ski resort area at over 10,000 elevation with a Jamaican on a temp job. A political/regulator class homeowner decided that he wanted a basement after all. Temporary foundation supports were used.

The Jamaican, in his sixties, told me, "Slavery!" I said, "What?" He said, "Slavery, mon! This is slavery!" I agreed. So did the dozens of dudes who were visiting from various countries from south of our southern border--those who weren't sent to the job, because they likely wouldn't have been able to do it.

Back in the '70s, I built a few houses then worked with steel--work that's all pretty much gone except for a few who travel around the country like gypsies and spend all of their earnings along the way. The economic collapse is a problem, but it's also probably part of the solution.

To those who prefer to feel that they will continue to be unaffected, it's coming. It's coming for everyone. See the debt from balance of payments deficits (trade). Many are trying to become more self-sufficient, because it's that or starve, freeze, etc., for many of us. It's not true that the nearly one hundred million unemployed are every one worthless. In fact, many of them are among the strongest and the best. Many have even been some of the best Freepers.

[Hugin]

Saving 40K on wages with a possible fine of less than 10% of that amount on the off chance you get caught sounds like a pretty sound cost cutting strategy.