I first wrote about the H-1B program in 2015.
Later this month I am in Orlando, Florida for the National Education Association’s Representative Assembly. I am an elected Retired delegate. I will also being attending the NEA Retired Conference that just precedes the RA.
The NEA brings a lot of people and a lot of money to wherever it holds its annual meeting. We are nearly 10,000 delegates and thousands of support staff. It is a big financial deal for the city where we meet, even for a mega-tourist town like Orlando.
I have been to the RA in Orlando before. The place resembles a company town.
And the company is Disney.
Old Walt Disney was born not far from my house here in Chicago.
He moved to Hollywood to seek his fame and fortune, first as a cartoonist and then as the head of his own film company and then a multi-national entertainment corporation.
But always a union-hater.
In 1941, the cartoonists working for Disney walked off the job in a strike for union recognition.
As Walt Disney turned his fashionable Packard roadster onto Buena Vista Blvd. he found the entrance to his studio ringed with a mob of 300 picketers and reporters. The protesters were his own cartoonists. Every couple of feet one stood on a soapbox and made angry speeches to passing picketers. Under the clear blue skies colorfully handpainted signs bobbed: DISNEY UNFAIR!, ONE GENIUS vs. 600 GUINEA PIGS, WE HAD NO SCABS AT SCHLESINGERS, LEONARDO, MICHELANGELO and TITIAN WERE UNION MEN, and a picture of Pluto with the title, ID RATHER BE A DOG THAN A SCAB!
The strike was long and bitter.
The strike lasted for nine weeks until Disney was at last compelled by Federal mediators, nationwide boycotts, his financiers the Bank of America and his brother Roy to give in and recognize the Guild. On Sept 21, 1941, everyone went back to work. Salaries doubled overnight for a 40-hour workweek and screen credits were established. The Screen Cartoonist Guild now represented 90% of Hollywood animation workers.
Walt Disney never changed. He remained a hater of unions and a backer of right-wing causes his entire life. A Koch brother of his day.
The Disney corporation has come a long way since Walt and his first drawing of Mickey.
Still, some things remain the same.
The Disney resort, where we are attending the Representative Assembly, is now the home of a continuing campaign to pit foreign guest workers and domestic employees against one another.
The employees who kept the data systems humming in the vast Walt Disney fantasy fief did not suspect trouble when they were suddenly summoned to meetings with their boss.
While families rode the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and searched for Nemo on clamobiles in the theme parks, these workers monitored computers in industrial buildings nearby, making sure millions of Walt Disney World ticket sales, store purchases and hotel reservations went through without a hitch. Some were performing so well that they thought they had been called in for bonuses.
Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.
The out-sourcing of jobs to lower paid guest workers in the information technology field is not limited to Disney, of course. It has become somewhat of a national scandal, as it is estimated that nearly two million tech jobs in the U.S. are filled by low-paid, non-union guest workers.
The workers are under constant threat of deportation if they complain or even whisper talk of union. They cannot move from employer to employer.
According to federal guidelines, the visas are intended for foreigners with advanced science or computer skills to fill discrete positions when American workers with those skills cannot be found. Their use, the guidelines say, should not “adversely affect the wages and working conditions” of Americans. Because of legal loopholes, however, in practice, companies do not have to recruit American workers first or guarantee that Americans will not be displaced.
Too often, critics say, the visas are being used to bring in immigrants to do the work of Americans for less money, with laid-off American workers having to train their replacements.
“The program has created a highly lucrative business model of bringing in cheaper H-1B workers to substitute for Americans,” said Ronil Hira, a professor of public policy at Howard University who studies visa programs and has testified before Congress about H-1B visas.
A limited number of the visas, 85,000, are granted each year, and they are in high demand. Technology giants like Microsoft, Facebook and Google repeatedly press for increases in the annual quotas, saying there are not enough Americans with the skills they need.
Many American companies use H-1B visas to bring in small numbers of foreigners for openings demanding specialized skills, according to official reports. But for years, most top recipients of the visas have been outsourcing or consulting firms based in India, or their American subsidiaries, which import workers for large contracts to take over entire in-house technology units — and to cut costs. The immigrants are employees of the outsourcing companies.
In 2013, those firms — including Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and HCL America, the company hired by Disney — were six of the top 10 companies granted H-1Bs, with each one receiving more than 1,000 visas.
When the now-former Disney employees were told they were being fired and replaced by temporary guest workers they were also required to train their replacements.
Disney “made the difficult decision to eliminate certain positions, including yours,” as a result of “the transition of your work to a managed service provider,” said a contract presented to employees on the day the layoffs were announced. It offered a “stay bonus” of 10 percent of severance pay if they remained for 90 days. But the bonus was contingent on “the continued satisfactory performance of your job duties.” For many, that involved training a replacement. Young immigrants from India took the seats at their computer stations.
“The first 30 days was all capturing what I did,” said the American in his 40s, who worked 10 years at Disney. “The next 30 days, they worked side by side with me, and the last 30 days, they took over my job completely.” To receive his severance bonus, he said, “I had to make sure they were doing my job correctly.”
In late November, this former employee received his annual performance review, which he provided to The New York Times. His supervisor, who was not aware the man was scheduled for layoff, wrote that because of his superior skills and “outstanding” work, he had saved the company thousands of dollars. The supervisor added that he was looking forward to another highly productive year of having the employee on the team.
The employee got a raise. His severance pay had to be recalculated to include it.
Awful. But you have to think that Uncle Walt would be smiling.
That old S.O.B.