
Workers paid $1.21 an hour to install Fremont tech company's computers - velik_m
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_26778017/tech-company-paid-employees-from-india-little-1
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anigbrowl
It's quite aggravating that the DoL can only fine them $3500. I think that at
the very least there ought to be punitive as well as economic damages in cases
of blatant abuse like this. The problem with our politics is that as soon as
someone proposes putting muscular penalties in place for egregious misbehavior
some lobbyist or PR flack will pop up with a story like 'Joe Schmoe made a
simple math error in distributing tip income among his restaurant
staff...under a proposed new law, he could face ruin and even jail time at the
hands of heartless government bureaucrats.'

 _Beverly Rubin, vice president of HR Shared Services with Electronics for
Imaging [said:] "During this process we unintentionally overlooked laws that
require even foreign employees to be paid based on local U.S. standards."_

That's a bit like your VP of accounting expressing surprise at discovering a
requirement to file annual tax returns.

 _The company said it cooperated fully with the U.S. Labor Department once it
became aware of the problem, and paid the back wages of the employees._

And why wouldn't they when the costs of noncompliance are so low? Despite
being caught, they still only paid CA minimum wage of $8/hour to make up the
difference - good luck finding anyone competent to install computers at that
price on the open market.

Hopefully the firm will be held to account for immigration fraud as well as
labor violations, because there is no way they applied for work visas for
these employees - doing so requires making declarations about wage/salary
equivalence. Most likely they told their Indian employees to apply for tourist
visas and say they were staying with relatives.

~~~
jmathai
_We are not going to tolerate this kind of behavior from employers_

then

 _resulted in more than $40,000 in back wages paid to the eight employees and
a fine of $3,500_

Show no mercy!

~~~
anigbrowl
The DoL can bring suit for back wages and an equal amount in liquidated
damages - which is still not a very aggressive penalty, but would have been
more impressive than this. I don't understand it.

[http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/wages/backpay.htm](http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/wages/backpay.htm)

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dreamweapon
_" During this assignment, they continued to be paid their regular pay in
India, as well as a special bonus for their efforts on this project," said
Beverly Rubin, vice president of HR Shared Services with Electronics for
Imaging. "During this process we unintentionally overlooked laws that require
even foreign employees to be paid based on local U.S. standards."_

For someone at the senior management level (directly responsible for cross-
border staffing, no less) to say that they "overlooked" such laws is either a
sign that they are either utterly incompetent -- or plainly lying.

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darkstar999
> a fine of $3,500

Are you fucking kidding me? Sounds like it's worth the risk in case you don't
get caught. Cost of doing business, baby!

~~~
michael_michael
I hope they paid their attorneys a LOT more than that to get the fees down to
$3,500. California's labor board is notoriously pro-employee and punitive
towards employers who do not honor labor laws.

~~~
anigbrowl
First, this is federal and not state, because they were foreign workers. It
even says in the first paragraph of the article that it was the US Department
of Labor rather than the California one.

Second, I hope you're wrong since a hearty income for the law firm would not
benefit the underpaid employees, who I think _still_ got a shitty deal even
including the back wages.

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pessimizer
More importantly than the $1.21 is the fact that there's absolutely no reason
for them not to continue doing it, and for other companies not to join in. If
you don't get caught, you save $41K. If you do get caught, you pay $3.5K. You
will rarely get caught.

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Zikes
Why not just call them interns and not pay them at all?

~~~
gohrt
Because that's also clearly illegal.

~~~
ugh123
Its not actually, if you define the work done in a specific way.

~~~
alexqgb
Except it's not up to you to define the work. It's up to the IRS, and they
have a very specific set of tests, none of which these guys would come even
remotely close to passing.

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coldcode
Electronics for Imaging's executive team should be publicly branded with some
kind of colorful letter for doing this. Yet the punishment is a fine they
likely found in an old couch.

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eyeareque
After going to India a couple of times I could see people from there not
caring about the low wages just so that they could go to California.

With that said the fines should be MUCH higher.

Also, this is a dupe of:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8498341](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8498341)

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jedanbik
Who are these people that exploit their workers in this way? What do they look
like? Where is their shame?

~~~
potatolicious
They look like you and me. They may in fact, under different circumstances,
_be_ you and me.

It's IMO dangerous to think about this sort of thing as being only possible by
a certain "type" of person. The road to hell is paved with good intentions,
and human beings are very, very good at rationalizing their own behavior,
particularly when the descent is gradual.

"If I don't pay them [unfair wage] they'd be out of work anyways. I'm the
least of the evils."

"They're earning they would be at home with this bonus, this is good for
them."

etc etc. The number of rationalizations is practically infinite.

All of us are susceptible to it. I've seen people better than me fall to frog-
boiling rationalizations and I'm not insane enough to think I'm immune.
There's a lot to be said for reality checking yourself frequently.

~~~
dreamweapon
And hey, just for fun: next time you're in some work situation and you get
wind of behavior like this, or even something far less egregious (such as
blackhat web scraping or other blatant IP abuse -- _very_ common out in start-
up land, btw), try confronting those responsible on it. It usually doesn't end
well.

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pyrophane
Does anyone know how they would have been able to bring in the foreign workers
to do that job in the first place? Is there a short-term work visa for this
sort of thing?

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api
This is doubly insane given that it's in the Bay Area. I don't know how anyone
can live there for under $100k/year.

~~~
ams6110
They aren't living there.

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jessaustin
It would be nice if the legions who decry "illegal immigration" at every
opportunity could get upset about this, but unfortunately many of them only
criticize in circumstances of a racially-precise nature. Actually even if I
got my wish and most of our racist immigration laws were repealed I would
_still_ support new regs to lower the boom, in remaining-in-business-
threatening fashion, on companies that pull this shit.

EDIT: If you don't want me to be referring to you, then I'm not.

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boards2x
Must say, as an Israeli myself, I'm embarrassed. I've never heard of the
company before but knew they were Israelies when I saw the names involved.

Just goes to show that exploitation, not (jewish) "genius", is behind most of
what we mistake for success. So much for the Israeli "startup nation" and its
offshoots.

~~~
darkstar999
What? This has nothing to do with Israel or Jews. It was a California company
flying in Indians for cheap labor.

~~~
dreamweapon
Perfectly relevant, given the background of company's principals.

~~~
darkstar999
I could get into it about Israel, but it's totally irrelevant in this case.

~~~
dreamweapon
There's nothing wrong with a person from country X saying he expects better
behavior from fellow people coming from country X. That's all that happened
here. There's no reason at all for people to get so touchy about it.

~~~
darkstar999
If you took what he said but replaced "as an Israeli myself" with "I'm not
Israeli", it would be racist. That's what annoys me. It might be different if
race/ethnicity/religion were involved in the article.

~~~
boards2x
That's just being cynical. Israeli national sport is to point out
Israeliness/jewishness (two completely different things, IMHO) of anything
that smells of success. We love to do this when it's positive, we try to hide
it when it's not. Like in this case. My first suspicion was that it was an
Israeli, not because I saw the name and suspected. I had no clue. Just a
suspicion which was verified. My reasons are probably my own experience in Hi
Tech in Israel and the abundance of indian programmers in many of our own
local companies.

PS-0 And don't get me started on how racist the jewish diaspora is, or
Israelis, in general. Towards black, arabs, other jews etc. It's a stinking
pile of self-hatred and racism.

PS-1 You can down vote as much as you want, it does not change the sad and
ugly truth.

