Thread: Zuckerberg Ally, H1-B Advocate: Laid-off Americans ‘Don’t Work Hard Enough’

by Adelle Nazarian
15 May 2015
255 comments

During a recent National Journal LIVE event, venture capitalist Lars Dalgaard, who is closely affiliated with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s lobbying group FWD.us, suggested that the reason hundreds of American STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and information technology (IT) workers at Southern California Edison utilities company were being laid off and replaced with foreign workers on H1B visas is because they “don’t work hard enough.”

FWD.us has openly lobbied for raising the cap on the number of H1-B visas permitted annually as part of President Barack Obama’s comprehensive immigration reform program, which critics refer to as executive amnesty.

As Breitbart News previously reported, the multi-billion dollar utilities company Southern California Edison has laid off scores of American IT workers, replacing them with foreign labor–specifically workers who are in the U.S. on H1-B visas and who are typically willing to work for far less compensation.

When the National Journal’s Niharika Acharya, who was moderating the panel discussion, asked about the Southern California Edison case, Dalgaard had this to say:

Dalgaard: You know, I’m relatively crude on that. If you want the job, make yourself able to get the job. Nobody’s going to hold you up and carry you around the world. This is what this whole country’s built on…If you’re not going to work hard enough to be qualified to get the job, like someone who doesn’t even live here yet….Well, then, you don’t deserve the job.

Acharya: Well, that might be harsh.

Acharya then turned to the other panelist, P.J. Cobut, who is a Belgian national, the founder of Echo Labs–and here on an H1B visa. She asked “do you agree with that?” Cobut replied, “Actually, I do.”

Cobut’s visa is set to expire on June 15 of this year, and a petition called “Let P.J. Stay” has been created to advocate for him to stay in Silicon Valley. He has said he will move his company to Canada if his extension is not approved.

Rutgers University Public Policy Professor Hal Salzman, who is an expert in the area of immigration and the STEM field, recently testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that there are only half the number of STEM jobs available for graduates in that field every year, and thatAmerican graduates will likely be crowded out by H1-B visa holders due to the cost of hiring alone.

The cost of hiring an H1-B visa worker is approximately $30,000 less annually than hiring an American-born or naturalized U.S. citizen in the same field. T

“We don’t need foreign workers. We have plenty of Americans who are fully capable and equipped to carry out these jobs. It’s an absolute issue of corporate greed; nothing more nothing less,” former Edison employee and Marine Pat Lavin told Breitbart News. He said that SoCal Edison was replacing $95,000 annual wage earners with H1-B visa workers who will earn $60,000 to $65,000 instead.

The H1-B program was created in 1990 by Congress. Over the years, the costs of wages were never pegged to inflation, which resulted in a plateauing of salaries and rampant abuse of the program.

Professor Ron Hira of the Rochester Institute of Technology has said, “The Indian government dubs the H1B program the ‘outsourcing visa’,” and adds:

Congress in conjunction with multiple Administrations have inadvertently created a highly lucrative business model of bringing in cheaper H-1B workers to substitute for Americans… The H-1B program is most definitely harming American workers, harming them badly, and on a large scale.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...k-hard-enough/

Originally Posted by Jean

As Breitbart News previously reported, the multi-billion dollar utilities company Southern California Edison has laid off scores of American IT workers, replacing them with foreign labor–specifically workers who are in the U.S. on H1-B visas and who are typically willing to work for far less compensation.

It's actually worse than that. H-1B visa holders are supposed to possess skills that American workers don't have. But Southern California Edison required its American employees to actually train their replacememts, before being fired. The company also required their employees to sign some kind of non-disclosure agreement. Bottom line: SoCal Edison fired people whom they intimidated into accepting being dumped, in favor of less skilled foreigners.
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Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade

Why would men who have enjoyed the fruits of our country's labor, economy and consumers at rates and levels higher than all but a few want to talk about their work force not working hard enough? Zuckerberg's 31 years old and worth $35 billion for an idea that allows people to tweet and post their photos on line. REALLY? And $35 billion isn't enough for you to earn it fair and square? You and your "allies" want to earn more by laying off Americans, denying Americans the opportunity to work for your company, overpopulating our country, growing poverty and the national debt for future generations to pay off? SERIOUSLY?!

And for you uninformed pieces of crap, here are the facts:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-worke...st-productive/

In 2005, reported in 2007:

U.S. Workers World's Most Productive


Ford Motor Company employees work on an assembly line at the Chicago Assembly Plant in this June 22, 2007 file photo. A new U.N. report says only Norwegian workers top Americans' output per working hour. AP Photo/M. Spencer Green, File

American workers stay longer in the office, at the factory or on the farm than their counterparts in Europe and most other rich nations, and they produce more per person over the year.
They also get more done per hour than everyone but the Norwegians, according to a U.N. report released Monday, which said the United States "leads the world in labor productivity."

Each U.S. worker produces $63,885 of wealth per year, more than their counterparts in all other countries, the International Labor Organization said in its report. Ireland comes in second at $55,986, ahead of Luxembourg, $55,641; Belgium, $55,235; and France, $54,609.

The productivity figure is found by dividing the country's gross domestic product by the number of people employed. The U.N. report is based on 2006 figures for many countries, or the most recent available.

Only part of the U.S. productivity growth, which has outpaced that of many other developed economies, can be explained by the longer hours Americans are putting in, the ILO said.

The U.S., according to the report, also beats all 27 nations in the European Union, Japan and Switzerland in the amount of wealth created per hour of work - a second key measure of productivity.

Norway, which is not an EU member, generates the most output per working hour, $37.99, a figure inflated by the country's billions of dollars in oil exports and high prices for goods at home. The U.S. is second at $35.63, about a half-dollar ahead of third-placed France.

Seven years ago, French workers produced over a dollar more on average than their American counterparts. The country led the U.S. in hourly productivity from 1994 to 2003.

The U.S. employee put in an average 1,804 hours of work in 2006, the report said. That compared with 1,407.1 hours for the Norwegian worker, and 1,564.4 for the French.

It pales, however, in comparison with the annual hours worked per person in Asia, where seven economies - South Korea, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia and Thailand - surpassed 2,200 average hours per worker. But those countries had lower productivity rates.

America's increased productivity "has to do with the ICT (information and communication technologies) revolution, with the way the U.S. organizes companies, with the high level of competition in the country, with the extension of trade and investment abroad," said Jose Manuel Salazar, the ILO's head of employment.

The ILO report warned that the widening of the gap between leaders such as the U.S. and poorer nations has been even more dramatic.

Laborers from regions such as southeast Asia, Latin America and the Middle East have the potential to create more wealth, but are being held back by a lack of investment in training, equipment and technology, the agency said.

In sub-Saharan Africa, workers are only about a twelfth as productive as those in developed countries, the report said.

"The huge gap in productivity and wealth is cause for great concern," ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said, adding that it was important to raise productivity levels of the lowest-paid workers in the world's poorest countries.

China and other East Asian countries are catching up quickest with Western countries. Productivity in the region has doubled in the past decade and is accelerating faster than anywhere else, the report said.

But they still have a long way to go: workers in East Asia are still only about a fifth as productive as laborers in industrialized countries.

The vast differences among China's sectors tell part of the story. Whereas a Chinese industrial worker produces $12,642 worth of output - almost eight times more than in 1980 - a laborer in the farm and fisheries sector contributes a paltry $910 to gross domestic product.

The difference is much less pronounced in the United States, where a manufacturing employee produced an unprecedented $104,606 of value in 2005. An American farm laborer, meanwhile, created $52,585 worth of output, down 10 percent from seven years ago, when U.S. agricultural productivity peaked.


© 2007 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/201...ys-u-s-workers

Americans working more, relaxing less than their peers

Tom Schaller says that despite increased productivity, U.S. workers have not enjoyed higher pay or more vacation time

August 20, 2013|Thomas F. Schaller

EASTHAM, Mass — Americans are a bunch of lazy layabouts who don't want to work and would rather live off the taxes generated by the toil of their countrymen. I hear some version of this rant repeatedly from people who believe that the American work ethic disappeared at some point in the past generation.

Here on gorgeous Cape Cod, where I vacation, I've been thinking about the state of American work and workers. So let's clear up a few matters.



First, American worker productivity is high and continues to rise.

In fact, according to a cross-national study released earlier this year by the International Labor Organization, American workers are the most productive in the world. Based on the most recent data available for each country, workers in the United States on average produce $63,885 of wealth annually; compared to other industrialized countries of Europe, only Norway's workers produce more wealth per hour ($37.99 in U.S. dollars) than do American workers ($35.63.)

Second, Americans work a lot
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Although workers in third-world countries put in roughly 2,200 hours per year, compared with other industrialized nations U.S. workers rank first, averaging about 1,800 hours annually. That's 400 more hours than the Norwegians and 330 more hours than the French.

So we work plenty and produce a lot. How else could a nation with only 4.5 percent of the world's population produce more than a fifth of the world's wealth?

Obviously, technology has boosted productivity. But technological advances also make work more pervasive and inescapable: Saleswomen today can call clients from the car or email them while in midair; middle managers can do paperwork on their laptops at night and on weekends. All of which means Americans today often work in places and at times that their parents and grandparents simply could not.

Although earlier generations of American workers surely would have done the same had cellphones and the Internet existed then, it doesn't change the fact that today's workers can work longer hours and perhaps never fully "leave" the office. (One benefit of technology is that it permits telecommuting and greater job flexibility, which is invaluable to working parents and many adults with physical limitations.)

So if Americans are working hard, they must be playing hard, too, right?

Sorry, it's just the opposite: The same country that ranks first among industrialized nations in total wealth productivity per year and second in wealth productivity per hour ranks dead last in terms of vacation time taken, especially paid vacation.

Of the 21 advanced economies examined in a study published earlier this summer by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the United States is the only nation that doesn't guarantee every worker a certain number of days of paid vacation. Although we have 10 official federal holidays, none are guaranteed paid vacation days — a commonplace legal right in most other industrialized nations.
Many Americans do, of course, receive and take paid vacation days from either their public-sector or private-sector employers. But almost a quarter of all Americans (23 percent, according to the CEPR study) get no paid vacation time whatsoever.

And this may shock those who think we've become a country of loafers: Almost 3 in 5 American workers in 2011 ended the year with unused vacation time. In a typical year, the estimated number of unused vacation days nationwide is 175 million. Divide that by a standard, 250-day work year, and that equates to 700,000 worker "years" of unused vacation annually.


Surely all the extra work and higher productivity have translated into better pay, yes?

Wrong again: The shameful reality is that worker productivity rose 80 percent from 1973 to 2011, yet median hourly compensation during the same period grew only about 10 percent. Since 2000, productivity is up 23 percent, but inflation-adjusted hourly pay has flat-lined
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Increasingly, the reward for hard work in America is, well, more work — at the same or lower compensation and with less time for play. Tell that to your blowhard uncle at this year's Labor Day picnic when he starts bellyaching about how nobody in this country works anymore.

Thomas F. Schaller teaches political science at UMBC. His column appears every other Wednesday. His email is schaller67@gmail.com. Twitter: @schaller67.

Americans are the hardest working most productive workers in the world.

If anyone believes that Congress inadvertently created the H1=b visa, I have a piece of ocean front ............ Congress for years have passed laws that were detrimental to USA citizens or did not pass laws that were good for USA citizens. USA government has been difficult at best to believe that it was for and by USA. VERY DIFFICULT,in fact!