
In Turnabout, Disney Cancels Tech Worker Layoffs - petethomas
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/us/in-turnabout-disney-cancels-tech-worker-layoffs.html
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adrr
The law should be written that if you caught violating the terms and spirit of
the h1-b visa program, you give up right to participate in h1-b sponsorships
for x number of years. H1-B is oversubscribed and if you suspend someone like
Tata, it will help alleviate that issue.

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makeitsuckless
Or simply prevent the problem.

In the Netherlands, similar visa have a minimum salary requirement. As a
result, we have tech workers from all over the planet, but no herds of cheap
labour from India. The Indians that are here are well paid experts.

If knowledge migrant visa are abused to import cheap labour, the problem is
clearly in the word "cheap".

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toomuchtodo
The H1-B visa program has a minimum salary requirement of $60K USD a year. Of
course, that's almost entry level in the technology sector. Raising that to
$100K-$150K/year would definitely help, and it would be hard to argue against
it. If you're relying on talent from outside the country due to a skills
shortage, paying a premium is the cost of doing business.

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sgrove
It would hurt startups under a few conditions. Perhaps there could be an
overall package, rather than pure salary (e.g., equity, etc.)? Or a gradient
on the scale of the employer? It's difficult to find a set of rules that don't
hamstring the small companies, don't misalign incentives for big companies,
and aren't ridiculously complex.

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toomuchtodo
I wouldn't be against taking equity into account, but in the end, cash salary
is most important. Equity is almost always a lottery ticket, even if you're a
founder. If you're a founder, you should be riding on a different US visa, not
an H1-B.

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sgrove
Oh sure, but for example, a company that's doing a knowledge-app that's
unexpectedly big in Japan, and they want to hire Japanese-fluent (also
technically very high skilled) engineers here. Early on they may not have the
cash-flow to hire "market-rate" (e.g. MicroGoogleBookZon) salaries, but is
willing to put skin in the game with other resources.

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teddyuk
This really is the worst way to treat your employees, if I was one of the
lucky people who was told to continue as if nothing had happened I would do
everything I could to get another job somewhere else asap.

Corporations need to show more respect to their employees, outsourcing to
india and then forcing the current employees to train the people replacing
them is no way to treat people.

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at-fates-hands
Agreed.

My best friend works at Cargill, and they're doing the same thing.

They get around the "outsourcing" rule by creating a Cargill office in India
and then sending all the "business" to those offices instead of here. It's
semantics, but its still outsourcing any way you look at it.

She's heartbroken because she's in the process of finalizing people's year-end
reviews who are going to be laid off within the next few months. Cargill also
makes it a policy you have to train your replacement or else you lose your
severance. So here she is, writing up year end reviews that have no value at
all, while training a new team that will replace her entire team here in in
the US.

Not cool, not cool at all.

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s73v3r
How about we simply outlaw any conditions on severance?

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pyrophane
Because companies have no obligation to provide severance, they often offer it
as part of a larger exit agreement that contains other terms. This really
limits the laid off employee's ability to negotiate because the company can
basically say "take it or leave it" since they know how valuable severance is
to someone in that situation. That is how they get away of forcing people to
sign non-disparagement agreements and to give up their right to sue.

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itg
This is Disney/ABC which is canceling the tech worker layoffs, which impacted
35 workers. Looks like the Disney World story which resulted in over 250
layoffs to bring in H1-B workers hasn't changed.

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Simulacra
I don't think we've heard the last of this from Disney. They have an
objective, maybe it's to reduce domestic workforce to save on benefits, or
reduce overhead. Regardless, that goal is still out there. They'll find
another way to do it, and it will probably be another round of layoffs sans
training replacements.

If it weren't for the forced humiliation of training their replacements, I
doubt we would have ever heard about this. People would have been (or will be
soon) laid off, and the foreign workers brought in, trained by a contractor,
and no one is the wiser.

American corporations do not value the American workforce, and neither does
our government.

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pavel_lishin
> _“We were told our jobs were continuing and we should consider it as if
> nothing had happened until further notice.”_

While technically that's basically what most people's work situation is -
you're an employee with work to do, unless you get fired or the company goes
out of business, in which case you'll definitely be given some notice - but it
sounds so much more ominous in this case.

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pyrophane
I can't imagine being laid off by my company and then told to just forget
about... for now. It sounds like the absolute worst way to treat employees.

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Delmania
>The tech employees he knew who had been required to train foreign
replacements had “routinely sacrificed personal time and freedoms to help make
your experience what it was” in the theme parks, he wrote.

This quote right here pretty much helps to explain why company loyalty is a
ridiculous notion. Employment is a business transaction. If the company deems
your position unnecessary or that you're too expensive, they will eliminate
that issue. Unless your job is threatened, it's never worth it to sacrifice
your personal time for your employer.

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neuro
Also reminiscent of the old Dutch East India Company -Citigroup sabal park
campus in Tampa, Florida rents out floors from nearby Hyatt Place hotel for
h1bs. There are roughly 5 h1bs per room.

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madaxe_again
Time to jump ship, as if they've made this feint, you can be sure they will at
some point follow through.

I mean, would you trust the guy who only beat you up _a little bit_ to not do
it again?

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partisan
One strategy Disney may apply is to retain the workers for some limited time,
offer them an option to continue on with a bonus, but force them to sign an
NDA of some kind in the process. Once the term is complete, they can lay off
the workers without the press hearing a single word about it.

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bdavisx
A contract to do something illegal isn't enforceable. You can't make a
contract that says you can't go to the police (or other authorities) to report
someone breaking the law.

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diogenescynic
This thread is a duplicate of:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9729762](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9729762)

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jmount
At best reschedules tech worker layoffs. Likely the bleed them out slower to
avoid layoff reporting laws.

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mfringel
That may be, but that doesn't mean it was useless to halt that abuse of the
process.

