Microsoft, Intel Firings Stir Resentment Over Visas for Foreign Workers

[Purveyor]

Source: Bloomberg

Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp.’s plan to eliminate U.S. workers after lobbying for more foreigner visas is stirring resentment among lawmakers and employees.

As many as 5,000 employees are being shown the door at Microsoft, which uses more H1-B guest-worker visas than any other U.S. company. Some employees and politicians say Microsoft should get rid of foreigners first.

“If they lay people off, are they going to think of America first or are they going to think of the world first?” Chuck Grassley, a Republican Senator from Iowa, said in an interview. He sent a letter to Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer the day after Microsoft announced the job cuts last month, demanding Ballmer fire visa holders first.

Across the technology industry, some of the biggest users of H1-B visas are cutting jobs, including Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. The firings at Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, came less than a year after Chairman Bill Gates lobbied Congress for an expansion of the visa program.

Even before Microsoft announced the cuts, its first-ever companywide layoffs, comments on a blog run by an anonymous Microsoft worker angrily debated getting rid of guest workers first. The author of the Mini-Microsoft blog eventually had to censor and then completely block all arguments about visas, after the conversation “got downright nasty.”

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=afB9Q1A5.qyI&refer=home

[TwilightGardener]

1. I'd like to know what the argument AGAINST cutting the foreign workers first is...

Are they demonstrably more valuable, do they make less in wages--Microsoft needs to explain.

[Cronopio]

2. Microsoft: "Hey look, we're a cult of mercenaries so what did you expect?"

I'm sure Ballmer is laughing his ass off at Grassley's letter/demand right now. He's that type.

[fasttense]

3. Microsoft want to use the US as a dumping ground for their overpriced software.

But the mini-monopoly sure as hell doesn't want any US citizens as employees. They want to use our markets but not our workers. Something is wrong with this picture.

[zalinda]

4. Honey, that's describing almost all

the large companies in the US doing business. When are the Democrats going to do something about it?

zalinda

[Romulox]

6. Thanks for this point. Still trying to figure out why IT jobs shouldn't be subject to "competition"

with third world workers, just like manufacturing jobs are. It's a "some of us are more equal" type of argument.

[Romulox]

5. Check out the parking lot at MS's Redmond campus. Full of Toyotas, Hondas, etc. nt

[OhioChick]

8. No different than when I drive past

GM at Lordstown. It's been like that for years now....foreign cars fill the lot. When I was a kid, I can remember asking my Father why they were shooting themselves in the foot.

[Romulox]

9. Excellent point.

I want you to know, I may make my point in a different way, but I am on your side on this.

:pals:

[OhioChick]

10. Same here....

Sometimes words don't express true meaning. :hug:

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. Guess that upped Linux interest a few notches

I cannot wait for Mr. d. to get started on Linux build.

[progressivebydesign]

11. I have been railing against this for months! Bill Gates is a hypocrite!

I know that he's moved into a different role in Microsoft, but he still lobbies for foreign worker visas for Microsoft. He loves to go on his speaking circuit and whine about how uneducated AMericans are, how bad our schools are, and how companies like MS and Intel just CANNOT FIND ANY skilled IT pros to work for him in America. Out of one side of his mouth he decries the state of our schools, and on the other side those companies import foreign workers to take breadwinner jobs in America. The workers live 3 or 4 to an apartment in Bellevue and spend little money here, all the while the unemployed IT workers in the Seattle area, are losing their homes.

Why doesn't Gates spend all that money he's used to LOBBY for more foreign workers, and open a damn TRAINING center for displaced American IT professionals??? He claims that there are no unemployed IT workers here that could fill these jobs.... well, if you spent the same $$ on getting them up to speed in a MS training center, you'd have all the employees you need. Microsoft and others have farmed out so many customer service jobs to India, and yet wonder why kids here aren't doing well in school. Ummm... the more you greedy corporate types send jobs way, the worse children will do in school, less money will be available for our school system (because you can't pay property taxes if you're unemployed and living in your car with your kids.), and so on.

I'm frankly so damn tired of Bill Gates and his magic Mosquito act. Yeah.. donate some of your billions for malaria. Very nice of you. And even though you're not at the helm officially at Microsoft anymore, do you think you might use some of your billions to help the families and children you've displaced by outsourcing and insourcing workers???

On an aside.. my daughter worked for a book store chain in Bellevue a few years ago. She waiting on a woman with a HUGE stack of DVDS, like hundreds of dollars worth of them, so she commented.. "wow, you must have a lot of birthdays coming up!", the woman replied... "oh, we're going overseas and want to take something to watch." It was only when her husband, Bill Gates, walked up behind her, that she realized who she was waiting on. She said Mrs. Gates was pleasant, Mr. Gates was preoccupied.

[riverdeep]

12. I like how one guy described the program: "on-shore off-shoring".

From this article a few years ago:

"The law lets them use so many sources to determine prevailing wage," said Berry, whose organization reportedly has 1,000 members. "The law should specify a minimum salary, above the median wage of comparable U.S. workers."

But critics maintain that another change in the law last year, one involving surveys used to determine the prevailing wage, worsened the wage problem. The shift increases the number of wage levels in surveys from two to four, a change Berry said makes it easier for unscrupulous employers to pay a low wage by categorizing experienced H-1B workers as novices.

http://news.cnet.com/Waging-battle-on-foreign-labor/2009-1022_3-5888772.html

IOW, the law says they can't pay the foreign workers less, so they just find the loopholes that allow them to do that anyway, like changing their job title to a lower-paying one, but still doing a higher wage job. The idea that they can't find enough quality workers in the US is absurd, it's about maximizing profit. I'd be pissed, too. But Americans long ago stopped caring about anything but the lowest price possible, witness the success of Wage Slave-Mart. "So what if buying this product costs ten thousand American jobs, it's twenty cents lower!"