WASHINGTON — In early 2015, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) warned that an increasing number of American workers were being laid off after being compelled by their employer to train their foreign replacement, many of whom were in the country on H-1B visas, which are given to immigrants to come work in specialized fields, usually in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) jobs. In early 2016, his warnings are appearing more and more prescient.
Perhaps most notably, Disney has sparked outrage around the country after laying off many of the Americans working in the company’s IT department and replacing them predominately with H-1B contract workers flown in from India.
Computer World, a digital magazine for information technology (IT) and business technology professionals, explains:
At the end of October, IT employees at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts were called one by one into conference rooms to receive notice of their layoffs. Multiple conference rooms had been set aside for this purpose, and in each room an executive read from a script informing the worker that their last day would be Jan. 30, 2015.
Some workers left the rooms crying; others appeared shocked. This went on all day. As each employee received a call to go to a conference room, others in the office looked up sometimes with pained expressions. One IT worker recalls a co-worker mouthing “no” as he walked by on the way to a conference room.
[…]
From the perspective of five laid-off Disney IT workers, all of whom agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity, Disney cut well-paid and longtime staff members, some who had been previously singled out for excellence, as it shifted work to contractors. These contractors used foreign labor, mostly from India. The laid-off workers believe the primary motivation behind Disney’s action was cost-cutting.
“Some of these folks were literally flown in the day before to take over the exact same job I was doing,” said one of the IT workers who lost his job. He trained his replacement and is angry over the fact he had to train someone from India “on site, in our country.”
Disney CEO Bob Iger co-chairs the Partnership for a New American Economy, an advocacy group pushing for more H-1B visas. He is joined by other wealthy business executives from large corporations, like Marriot’s Bill Marriot, Boeing’s Jim McNerney and billionaires like Michael Bloomberg and Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer.
Senator Sessions frequently refers to them and other wealthy advocates of increasing the flow of cheap, foreign labor as the “Masters of the Universe.”
“The Masters of the Universe are very fond of open borders, as long as these open borders don’t extend to their gated compounds and fenced off estates,” Sessions said in a speech on the Senate floor.
“The individual who works stocking the shelves at the grocery store, the barber, the doctor, the lawyer, the cleaners operator, [and] the person who picks up our garbage are every bit as valuable as they are,” he added. “So I know who I represent. I represent citizens of the United States of America.”
Sessions’ speeches and editorials against the controversial H-1B visa program typically focus on the primary thrust of its advocates’ argument: that there is a shortage of STEM workers in America.
Citing a USA Today article with the subtitle “Silicon Valley has created an imaginary staffing shortage,” Sessions again took to the Senate floor last year to, in his words, advocate on behalf of American workers.
Many of us have heard for a long time the claim that there is a shortage of STEM and IT workers. This has been the central sales pitch used by those making demands for massive increases in foreign-worker programs across the board — programs that bring in workers for every sector in the U.S. economy. But we know otherwise from the nation’s leading academics, people who studied this issue and are professionals in it. I have a recent op-ed here from USA Today which reports that there is actually not a shortage but a surplus of Americans who have been trained in the STEM and IT fields and that this is why wages for these fields have not increased since 1999.
If you have a shortage of workers in a field such as information technology or science and mathematics, wages go up, do they not? If wages are not up, we don’t have a shortage.
So rich high-tech companies are using the H-1B visa program to keep wages down and to hire less expensive workers from abroad. Indeed, the same companies demanding more guest workers are laying off American workers in droves.
Sessions has also argued that H1-B visas are not only being used for high-wage, high-skilled foreign workers.
“It operates as a low-wage nonimmigrant temporary visa, undercutting the jobs and wages of highly qualified Americans,” he said. “Just recently, Southern California Edison laid off hundreds of loyal employees and forced them to train the H-1B guest workers hired to replace them. One of those replaced American workers was a mother with a physical disability caring for two children.”
But it is fairly rare for a worker being laid off in favor of H-1B visa holders to speak publicly because many of them are bound by a “non-disparagement clause” in their severance package that prevents them from speaking out.
Senator Sessions and Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) have sponsored a bill that includes a prohibition against non-disparagement clauses.
The bill “would prevent employers who seek access to the (H-1B) program from requiring American employees to sign so-called non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements.” Sessions believes the bill, titled “The American Jobs First Act of 2015,” would also ease the pressure on the U.S. labor force from foreign workers coming into the country.
It did not pass, but the recent high profile layoffs could bring the issue back to the forefront.
“America is a country, not a spreadsheet,” Sessions concluded. “A country puts the needs of its own citizens first.”
