worker won't quit
worker won't quit
Date: Monday, August 04, 2003 6:48 PM
JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
www.ZaZona.com
This is a very good article. Even a shill gives us valuable
information. Daryl Buffenstein, general counsel of Global Alliance
Personnel, said that:
The story of the L-1 is the story of job creation.
It is the story of bringing jobs to the United States,
and of keeping here, in this country, jobs that would
otherwise move elsewhere," he said. "The legitimate
use of the L-1 visa is critical to the ability of
companies to transfer needed managerial and specialized
expertise to their United States operations."
What he doesn't say is that companies won't create jobs in the U.S. L-1
visa holders are brought into the U.S. to learn the technologies so
that the company can outsource its operations to a foreign nation.
That's why Emmons and other Siemens employees were forced to train L-1
visa holders who were to replace them once they learned the technology.
Jobs will move elsewhere much faster if the L-1s and H-1Bs are allowed
to come here. It's a critical link in the outsourcing chain.
http://www.n-jcenter.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Headlines/03NewsTECH01080303.htm
With job outsourced to foreigners, worker won't quit
By MARK HARPER
Staff Writer
Last update: 03 August 2003
LONGWOOD -- In a year, Michael Emmons has seen desperation turn to
obsession. Now obsession has become political ambition.
It all came, he said, from humiliation.
Last fall, Emmons, a 41-year-old husband and father of two, was losing
his job. He had worked as an information technology consultant at
Siemens Information and Communication Networks in Lake Mary for six
years.
The company was planning to outsource -- or hire an outside consulting
firm. The work he and 12 Siemens employees in the Lake Mary Information
Technology department had been doing would be assigned to a group of
lower-wage workers from India. The Seimens workers would be asked to
train their replacements.
"The most humiliating experience of my life," he called it.
Emmons has become a leading noisemaker among a growing contingent of
outsourced information technology workers. In recent months, they have
spurred lawmakers to consider immigration policy changes. Meanwhile,
the high-tech corporations and outsourcing firms say they are only
trying to improve efficiency after the tech bubble's burst, strengthen
their businesses and ultimately, create more jobs.
Still, tech workers operate in a spirit of discontent. While Siemens
says it has hired back five of the 12 employees it laid off in Lake
Mary last year, others have found it difficult to find other jobs in
their field. Emmons, who landed a government-sector job with a "huge"
cut in pay, is still angry and talking about riding his story to
Washington. The descendant of an 1820s Georgia governor says he intends
to run for Congress next year.
OUTSOURCING OUTRAGE
Like all companies, Siemens is susceptible to changes in the economy.
The Information and Communication Networks department produced
networking equipment for large companies, but those companies stopped
making such investments after 2000. The collapse of WorldCom, a Siemens
customer, didn't help matters, said Bud Grebey, a Siemens vice
president for public relations.
Siemens -- like many companies -- began looking at other ways of doing
business. In that same timeframe, hundreds, if not thousands, of
American tech workers were replaced by foreigners using the L-1 visa, a
once-obscure vehicle for U.S. companies to temporarily bring over
foreign managers or employees with "specialized knowledge" without
having to run through a lot of red tape.
Emmons said this is the way tech corporations can find cheaper labor
pools.
"These knowledge jobs cannot be moved overseas without bringing
(foreign workers) into our country to learn the business processes, the
way the corporation works," he said. "The L-1 is where our government
is giving them a golden egg to do it."
But the Justice Department has looked at Emmons' complaints and opted
not to take action, he said.
Tata Consulting Services, the Indian firm that won the Siemens contract
last year, says it legally obtains visas for its workers. If there's
confusion, some immigration experts say, it is that the federal L-1
visa law doesn't define the kind of "specialized knowledge" workers
must possess in order to get a pass to America.
An information technology industry group says the Immigration and
Naturalization Service has broadly defined the term: "Knowledge need
not be proprietary or unique, only advanced."
Yet Emmons and others say "specialized knowledge" should be viewed more
as skills that a company can find no workers in the United States
possess. It's questionable whether any legislation could slow the
outsourcing phenomenon, however.
Forrester Research, a Massachusetts business technology think tank,
predicts 3.3 million U.S. service industry jobs representing $136
billion in wages will be outsourced to companies in India, Russia,
China and elsewhere during the next 15 years.
Ultimately, outsourcing will lead to a stronger U.S. economy, said
Daryl Buffenstein, general counsel of Global Alliance Personnel,
Atlanta.
"The story of the L-1 is the story of job creation. It is the story of
bringing jobs to the United States, and of keeping here, in this
country, jobs that would otherwise move elsewhere," he said. "The
legitimate use of the L-1 visa is critical to the ability of companies
to transfer needed managerial and specialized expertise to their United
States operations."
FIGHTING FOR CHANGE
Since their jobs were outsourced, Patricia Fluno, a 53-year-old senior
systems analyst from Orlando, and Emmons have been making the rounds,
being quoted in BusinessWeek and Time magazines, doing television
interviews. Emmons' Web site is filled with L-1 rhetoric and diatribes.
Last week, Fluno told her story to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on
Immigration and Border Security.
"What is the economic impact of this in the long run?" she asked the
subcommittee. "Where will our children find jobs? We need incentives to
keep jobs in the United States."
After 10 months of looking, Fluno found a computer programming job in
the Orlando area. Though she kept the same title, she has to travel
farther and makes less money. She scoffs at the notion of retraining
for work in a different field.
"I don't want to return to school to learn something else," she said.
"I want to do what I'm best at."
At the urging of Emmons and Fluno, U.S. Rep. John Mica, a Winter Park
Republican, filed a bill in May that would limit outsourcing to L-1
visa holders who are from company subsidiaries, not a third party.
"Many Americans have found themselves in the unemployment line because
some companies have abused our immigration laws," Mica said in a
written statement. "Unfortunately, the L-1 visa program, while
well-intentioned, has been used as a back door for cheap labor."
However, Emmons and others take issue with Mica's bill, saying it only
leaves other loopholes for corporations like Siemens, which contributed
nearly $5,000 to Mica's campaign in 2002.
It "supposedly reforms L-1 but actually does nothing at all," said Norm
Matloff, a computer science professor at the University of
California-Davis.
Bills proposed by Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Sen. Christopher Dodd, both
Connecticut Democrats, have a better chance to protect American
workers, Matloff said.
DeLauro's legislation, for instance, would cap L-1s at 35,000 annually
and prohibit visas to any firm that has laid off an American worker in
the past six months and for six months after the application has been
filed. It also would require the applicant to have been employed by the
petitioning firm full time, continuously, for three years, as well as
authorizing the Department of Labor to conduct ongoing surveys of the
level of compliance by employers.
Industry watchers are divided on what approach would be most
appropriate. Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law professor at
Cornell University, said the congressional proposals appear to be
overreaching.
"I don't think legislation would be necessary if the (Bureau of
Citizenship and Immigration Services) and the State Department would
review each application carefully," he said. "Even if new legislation
is enacted, that could still be a problem."
Regardless, it appears Congress is moving toward some action.
"The status quo is not acceptable," Dodd said during the subcommittee
hearing.
SPREADING THE WORD
Before leaving his Siemens consultant job last year, Michael Emmons was
petrified about what unemployment might bring. Medical insurance was a
prime concern, as his 7-year-old daughter, Hanna, has spina bifida and
has been through eight surgeries.
"I realized I gotta do something to keep myself a job," he said. "In
the back of my mind, I'm thinking if I don't have insurance, I don't
know what I would do."
So he plotted his revenge. Many Siemens workers, he believes, weren't
aware of the company's outsourcing, so he decided to make a big splash.
For weeks, he clandestinely gathered documents, downloaded notes and
collected proof that he and other Americans were training their
replacements.
At 5:30 a.m. on Jan. 14, he started sending out a mass e-mail to more
than 4,000 Siemens workers, spelling out the way he had been replaced,
railing against Siemens managers and warning them: "Watch your back."
He says he got dozens of notes of support from Siemens employees across
the United States. "So many people here are cheering you on," one
wrote.
The experience got Emmons -- who says his ancestors also include
generals and an admiral -- to think bigger.
"Maybe it is in my blood to fight for what is right in our country."
mark.harper@news-jrnl.com
Visas for Workers
After Congress abandoned the immigration quota system, international
corporations based in the United States were having a difficult time
transferring key employees from abroad to work in their American
facilities.
7 In 1970, Congress devised the L-1 visa, which allows for temporary
transfers of employees to parent, subsidiary or affiliate companies for
a limited period of time. This was later amended to allow managers or
executives to work in the United States for seven years and those
workers with "specialized knowledge" for five.
7 Generally, to qualify for an L-1, a person must have worked for the
company seeking the visa for at least one year in the last three.
7 According to U.S. Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park, there are 325,000
L-1 visa holders in the United States.
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