Disney Replaces White Collar Jobs with Cheap Immigrant Labor!

Dear Commons Community,

Disney has announced a series of layoffs of white collar staff who will be replaced by lower-paid immigrant workers. As reported in the New York Times:

“The employees who kept the data systems humming in the vast Walt Disney fantasy fief did not suspect trouble when they were suddenly summoned to meetings with their boss.

While families rode the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and searched for Nemo on clamobiles in the theme parks, these workers monitored computers in industrial buildings nearby, making sure millions of Walt Disney World ticket sales, store purchases and hotel reservations went through without a hitch. Some were performing so well that they thought they had been called in for bonuses.

Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.

“I just couldn’t believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and take over our jobs exactly,” said one former worker, an American in his 40s who remains unemployed since his last day at Disney on Jan. 30. “It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your job. I still can’t grasp it.”

Disney executives said that the layoffs were part of a reorganization, and that the company opened more positions than it eliminated.

But the layoffs at Disney and at other companies, including the Southern California Edison power utility, are raising new questions about how businesses and outsourcing companies are using the temporary visas, known as H-1B, to place immigrants in technology jobs in the United States. These visas are at the center of a fierce debate in Congress over whether they complement American workers or displace them.

According to federal guidelines, the visas are intended for foreigners with advanced science or computer skills to fill discrete positions when American workers with those skills cannot be found. Their use, the guidelines say, should not “adversely affect the wages and working conditions” of Americans. Because of legal loopholes, however, in practice, companies do not have to recruit American workers first or guarantee that Americans will not be displaced.

Too often, critics say, the visas are being used to bring in immigrants to do the work of Americans for less money, with laid-off American workers having to train their replacements.

“The program has created a highly lucrative business model of bringing in cheaper H-1B workers to substitute for Americans,” said Ronil Hira, a professor of public policy at Howard University who studies visa programs and has testified before Congress about H-1B visas.”

A letter to the New York Times editor today summed up well the feelings of a lot of people to Disney’s crassness.

“I was appalled and disappointed reading “Pink Slips at Disney. But First, Training Foreign Replacements” (front page, June 4). I have previously read accounts of this happening at other companies, but I have trouble reconciling such a gross lack of human compassion at a company that constantly strives to project an image of happiness, gentleness and well-being.

I have owned Disney stock for over 30 years. It has shown admirable profits. But now, it appears tainted in my portfolio. As I grow older I realize — thank heavens — that the “bottom line” should not be a financial one, but instead one that shows fellow humans dignity and respect. It is ironic how miserably Disney has failed in this.”

JOAN B. ODEAN – Hendersonville, N.C.

Tony

 

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