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IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

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Re: IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

#11

Post by greggman »

If there's a smoking gun for IBM great, fine $$$$$$$ IBM. But my personal anecdotal experience is that the companies I've worked for pay the same for HB-1 vs local. They don't look at it as trying to find cheap employees. They look at as trying to find qualified employees anywhere, world wide.

Companies I've worked for, Virgin Games (run by a British immigrant), Shiny Entertainment (also run by a British immigrant and seemed like > 50% foreigners). Naughty Dog had at least 5 or 6 foreigners of 30 employees when I was there. The owner even made a point of showing us the first hire's salary and asking us if we knew any locals that were qualified for the job that wanted the job so that he was sure he was above the law.

A few years later that hire went on to co-found Ready At Dawn which was founded by 3 immigrants. I have no idea how many of their employees are foreign.

I have seen one company, Interplay, abuse their power over a foreign employee by threatening to pull their visa support for him before if he didn't do X (I think X was stop some un-work related outside music activity). He ended up marrying his local GF and then got the hell out of that company.

The company I currently work for, as far as can tell, has a similar position. We'll hire anyone that applies that can convince us they can do the job. Finding them is hard. There may be tons of qualified people but either they aren't applying, they can't write a resume that makes it look like they're qualified, or they can't convince us in the interview that they are qualified.

Re: IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

#12

Post by jhartmann »

jbooth wrote: post #8

If your job is to put butts in seats so you can bill for them, yeah. If your job is to deliver products, you'll find you get what you pay for, I work with some guys who maybe make 10k less than they could because of their immigration status but it's not a difference between 150k and 60k or something.

Depends on the place and where the H1-B is from. I have seen situations where H1-B works make half of the American worker. One tactic I have seen is that the American companies tend to basically lock in the workers by paying legal fees and dangle the green card sponsorship carat. The H1-B individuals typically will put up with this for the chance at perm residency. While not all of them, make no mistake there is a real new indentured servant class.

Re: IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

#13

Post by supercanuck »

greggman wrote: post #11

If there's a smoking gun for IBM great, fine $$$$$$$ IBM. But my personal anecdotal experience is that the companies I've worked for pay the same for HB-1 vs local. They don't look at it as trying to find cheap employees. They look at as trying to find qualified employees anywhere, world wide. Companies I've worked for, Virgin Games (run by a British immigrant), Shiny Entertainment (also run by a British immigrant an…

I work in the SAP space, My experience is most of the abuse is handled through 3rd parties. You will never be able to pin it on an IBM or an HP directly, but their will be 3rd party resourcing companies that will pull visas and force project members to live 2 to a room in a 2 bedroom apartment to save costs.

Re: IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

#14

Post by Zenst »

joseflavio wrote: post #5

A very simple solution used here in Europe is that the VISA does not tie you up with the employer! This was the employer has all the expenses and work to bring you but if your wage is not competitive you can just leave the company and enter in another one who pays you the market price. The problem in USA is that the foreigners are totally under the control of the hiring company, so sure you create an artificial lower…

That change would certainly make a big difference and yet sadly most can not see the gains from having a more open visa. Reason being that such a change in the common mans eye's will look like more errosion of job prospects than one which locks the competition to one company so to speak.

Though given this http://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2012/06/13/no-hir...

Then I'd expect IBM have a situation that any idle workers with visa's landed (landed - not sure if that IBM term means they have a visa and can fly over or have a visa and already in the country ). That if they don't use them then like budgets not fully used up they lose them next year. Given that no new visa's are available until next year, then things can only get better.

But IBM are certainly cruising for a law bruising fine.

Re: IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

#15

Post by gkamal »

After reading the section below from the WTO site I can't understand how such a practice of discriminating against foreign workers is compatible with free trade espoused and taken advantage of by developed countries. Protectionism in terms of differential pricing of goods in many cases to protect local industries and jobs is considered against free trade. This to me seems like a very opportunistic interpretation of free trade.

http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/fact2_e.h... 2. National treatment: Treating foreigners and locals equally Imported and locally-produced goods should be treated equally — at least after the foreign goods have entered the market. The same should apply to foreign and domestic services, and to foreign and local trademarks, copyrights and patents. This principle of “national treatment” (giving others the same treatment as one’s own nationals) is also found in all the three main WTO agreements (Article 3 of GATT, Article 17 of GATS and Article 3 of TRIPS), although once again the principle is handled slightly differently in each of these.

National treatment only applies once a product, service or item of intellectual property has entered the market. Therefore, charging customs duty on an import is not a violation of national treatment even if locally-produced products are not charged an equivalent tax.

P.S : I am from India, I have no intention now (or ever before) of emigrating to find better opportunities. So this comment is not borne out of any bitterness. It is out of genuine curiosity to know why this point of view is rarely mentioned in any such debate.

Re: IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

#16

Post by supercanuck »

jbooth wrote: post #8

If your job is to put butts in seats so you can bill for them, yeah. If your job is to deliver products, you'll find you get what you pay for, I work with some guys who maybe make 10k less than they could because of their immigration status but it's not a difference between 150k and 60k or something.

In cases where the job description is something like "Business Analyst" or "Software Engineer", the difference between an American with 10 years of experience and an H1B with "10 years of experience" can be extremely high.

This also isn't the equivalent work of say a Startup. A lot of it is simply a butt in the seat performing some form of labor.

Re: IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

#17

Post by varjag »

joseflavio wrote: post #5

A very simple solution used here in Europe is that the VISA does not tie you up with the employer! This was the employer has all the expenses and work to bring you but if your wage is not competitive you can just leave the company and enter in another one who pays you the market price. The problem in USA is that the foreigners are totally under the control of the hiring company, so sure you create an artificial lower…

This is simply not true, throughout most of Europe your work permit is tied to your employment until you qualify for permanent residence permit (typically after 3 years).

Re: IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

#18

Post by geebee »

jhartmann wrote: post #9

Absolutely horrible state of affairs, I understand that because of the economic incentive that this will and does happen all the time. I feel that the only way to stop this is to take away the economic incentive to hire foreign workers. If there was a tax that required the difference between market for the position to be paid to state and federal government we would solve this problem overnight. I also think part of…

I'm generally suspicious of any visa program specifically designed to address "shortages" of workers in particular fields/professions. I wouldn't have a problem with a points system for general, skilled immigration though.

However, that appears to be unlikely at this moment. If I had to tinker with the system, I'd say that the two biggest problems are 1) the visa gives the employer too much control over the employee's right to reside in the US, and 2) the "prevailing wage" requirement isn't effective.

The "indentured" problem is easily solved, just award the visa directly to the employee with full rights to reside in the US for the duration of the visa.

The "prevailing wage" problem is a little more complicated. The first big problem is that this requirements is easily circumvented. At my organization, there are different salary tiers for programmers. It would be trivial to hire an expert at a lower level and claim you are paying the prevailing wage.

A more fundamental problem is that even an honest attempt to pay the "prevailing wage" can still lead to wage stagnation across the field. Generally, when a "shortage" occurs, wages rise and new people are attracted to the field. One reason for the "shortage" of software developers is that US citizens with the talent do this can find equal or greater wages with better career stability in other fields.

Wages need to rise to draw them back into software, but if employers are able to use visas to pay "market rate", this increase may not happen - or if it does, the rate of increase may be diminished.

To solve this, I'd instead use a pay index that includes fields outside of programming, and set a high floor for visas. For instance, you might decide that 120K+ a year is the minimum salary allowable for an H1B (necessary, not sufficient). I know many employers will object vehemently to this, but keep in mind, they are arguing for a specialized visa that bypasses the normal immigration system, justified by the claim that these are highly educated, critical workers that employers can't find at any price. Hard to believe that these highly educated workers are really so hard to find if you object to paying 2/3 of what a 24 year old out of a top law school would earn (yes, I know, that's only the top law grads, but nobody is claiming that there's a shortage of middle tier law grads, we're talking about a shortage of critical, highly educated workers.

Re: IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

#19

Post by isalmon »

greggman wrote: post #11

If there's a smoking gun for IBM great, fine $$$$$$$ IBM. But my personal anecdotal experience is that the companies I've worked for pay the same for HB-1 vs local. They don't look at it as trying to find cheap employees. They look at as trying to find qualified employees anywhere, world wide. Companies I've worked for, Virgin Games (run by a British immigrant), Shiny Entertainment (also run by a British immigrant an…

>> the companies I've worked for pay the same for HB-1 vs local. They don't look at it as trying to find cheap employees. They look at as trying to find qualified employees anywhere, world wide.

My experience is very different. I was on H-1b for 4 years before getting my green card and EACH of my 3 employers (including big Finnish cell phone company) paid me MUCH lower than my market salary. Each time they told me that they had additional costs of: 1. Filing for my H-1b 2. Filing for my green card.

Almost everyone I know who's on H-1b is dreaming about getting their GC. Pretty much the only legal way to get it is through your current employer. Employers know about that and leverage when it comes to salary negotiations. The result - H-1b's get paid MUCH less than people with US passport or GC.

Re: IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

#20

Post by btipling »

From a pure market perspective, doesn't the regulation actually attempt to force a pricing inefficiency? If there are international candidates willing to work for less, why doesn't the average salary drop for local workers to the point where they also become competitive?
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