Thread: Silenced workers who lost jobs to H-1B visa abuse (quietly) speak out

Silenced workers who lost jobs to H-1B visa abuse (quietly) speak out

BY BYRON YORK |
22, 2015 | 8:37 AM



Many fired workers are required to sign non-disparagement agreements as a condition of their...The Senate Judiciary Committee recently held a hearing into abuses of the H-1B skilled guest worker visa program. Lawmakers heard experts describe how the use of foreign workers has come to dominate the IT industry, with many tech giants using the program to fire well-paid current workers and replace them with workers from abroad at significantly lower pay.

"The current system to bring in high-skill guest workers ... has become primarily a process for supplying lower-cost labor to the IT industry," two experts who testified at the hearing, Howard University's Ron Hira and Rutgers' Hal Salzman, wrote recently. "Although a small number of workers and students are brought in as the 'best and brightest,' most high-skill guest workers are here to fill ordinary tech jobs at lower wages."

Exhibit A in the abuse of H-1Bs was the case of Southern California Edison, which recently got rid of between 400 and 500 IT employees and replaced them with a smaller force of lower-paid workers brought in from overseas through the H-1B program. The original employees were making an average of about $110,000 a year, the committee heard; the replacements were brought to Southern California Edison by outsourcing firms that pay an average of between $65,000 and $75,000.

"Simply put, the H-1B program has become a cheap labor program," Hira, author of the bookOutsourcing America, testified. "To add insult to injury, Southern California Edison forced its American workers to train their H-1B replacements as a condition of receiving their severance packages."

It was a powerful presentation, especially in light of the fact that many Republicans and Democrats in Congress do not want to address abuses of the H-1B problem but rather want to greatly increase the number of H-1B visa workers allowed into the United States.

But one voice was missing from the hearing, and that was the voice of laid-off workers. That was no accident. In addition to losing their jobs and being forced to train their foreign replacements, many fired workers are required to sign non-disparagement agreements as a condition of their severance. They are workers with families and bills to pay, and they are told that if they do not agree to remain silent, they will be terminated with cause, meaning they will receive no severance pay or other benefits and will face an even tougher search for a new job and a continued career. So they remain silent.

A longtime feature of the Capitol Hill hearing into this or that unfair practice is to hear from the victims of this or that unfair practice. The IT industry has worked to make sure that does not happen in the case of H-1B visa abuse. Still, the Judiciary Committee managed to receive testimonials from four laid-off workers, three from Southern California Edison and one from another company. So to flesh out the H-1B story with the perspective of those who are actually paying the price when H-1B visas are used to displace American workers, here are their anonymous testimonials:

Worker One:

My former company, a large utility company, replaced 220 American IT workers with H-1Bs…we would have to train them in order to receive our severance packages. This was one of the most humiliating situations that I have ever been in as an IT professional.

The whole IT department was going through the same fate as myself. Those were the longest and hardest five months of my life. Not only did I lose a work family, but I lost my job and my self-esteem. We had constant emails sent by HR that we could not talk about this situation to anyone or make posts to social media. If we did, we would be fired immediately and not get our severance.

We had jobs and there was no shortage of skilled labor that would make it necessary to bring in H-1Bs. We were let go and replaced by foreign workers who certainly weren't skilled to take our positions.

Worker Two:

I am an IT professional and worked for Southern California Edison for over two decades. I was a loyal employee and always received outstanding reviews. A foreign worker with a H-1B visa recently replaced me.

I am the sole provider of my children. Due to a disability, finding employment at the same wage and with a work modification will be very difficult…It is an ominous possibility that in five years or less I may have no assets, suffer from severe pain and will need to go on full disability with a catastrophic decrease in income. The loss of my job may rob me of a secure retirement.

My layoff has made my children fearful of their future and the security of their home. If I stay in the IT field I run a high risk of again being replaced by a foreign worker.

It's a farce teaching our kids STEM when the government is permitting U.S. companies to abuse the H-1B visa program, which allows foreigners to take these future jobs from them.

I voted for President Obama and was appalled that he implemented a rule change, which allows work permits to H-1B spouses. My future votes will only go to candidates that support reforms to the H-1B visa program that preserve the American worker.

Worker Three:

I started working at Southern California Edison several decades ago. SCE was a company that many people started with at a young age, could work there through their lifetimes, and retire with a good pension and benefits. That was my plan. And I would have been able to do exactly that -- until an executive announced a couple years ago that my department was going to be outsourced.

We were forced to train the less qualified foreign workers hired to take our jobs.

Over 400 hardworking, intelligent people have lost their jobs due to the H-1B visa program. Many of us, and countless more like us, face enormous hurdles to find new jobs -- why would companies want to hire us when they can hire cheaper workers on the H-1B visa to do our jobs for us?

:Worker Four

As longtime employees we loved the work we were doing and the people we were working with. We did a great job. Our work mattered. The work we performed was instrumental in building a world-class business unit.

Through no fault of my own my job was just given to someone else with a lot less experience, knowledge and skills, lowering my standard of living and raising theirs so Edison could save a few dollars and reward stockholders with a few more pennies on their dividends.

I and most of my co-workers are completely disgusted that Edison can fire us and replace us with foreign workers, abusing the H1-B program. We cannot understand how the CPUC (California Public Utilities Commission), Governor and Congress, President and media can all ignore this abuse and just pretend it doesn't matter. It's as if we no longer matter or have value as human beings or American citizens.

It's certainly true that other workers in other industries have lost jobs because companies wanted to cut costs. Highly-paid middle-aged workers have been replaced by younger employees working for less. That can be an unhappy fact of life in today's economy. But in the case of H-1Bs, the federal government is expressly giving a special permit to foreign workers — actually, to large outsourcing firms that use H-1Bs to bring those workers to the U.S. — in order to displace American workers. And now many lawmakers in both parties — their task made simpler by the enforced silence of fired and angry workers — want even more H-1Bs. Is that something the government should do?

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/vi...rticle/2561856

400 Workers Losing Their Middle-Class Jobs to H-1B Visa Guest Workers at Calif. Utility


Monica Sanchez | February 6, 2015 1:08pm ET

Southern California’s largest utility company has reportedly laid off 400 American tech workers and filled their positions with lower-paid workers on H-1B visas approved by the Obama administration.

To make matters worse, the Los Angeles company is requiring the laid-off American workers to train their replacements.
A news release from Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) explains,

“American workers at the power company Southern California Edison were laid off and forced to train their H-1B replacements. The Obama Administration is pushing to double the number of H-1B workers hired to replace Americans at lower wages. The stock of STEM and IT guest workers in the United States is so large that 2/3 of all new IT jobs are now being filled by workers imported from abroad.”

The company has confirmed the layoffs and the hiring of Indian guest workers from Infosys, based in Bangalore, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), based in Mumbai.

Southern California Edison (SCE) reportedly released a statement about its recent actions.

“In an effort to act as cost effectively and prudently as possible… (SCE) is outsourcing some technology-related work functions."

The company went on to say, “SCE does not take this action lightly and it is assisting employees through this difficult period.”
Requiring your late employees to train their fill-ins can’t be helping.

According to a Fox News report, the company will save about $40,000 dollars per worker, about $16 million dollars a year.
Watch the segment below for more.

http://www.mrctv.org/blog/400-worker...-guest-workers

Hillary Clinton appears to have been in bed with TATA for years.

.S. Secretary of State Clinton, Chairman of Tata Group Ratan Tata and Chief of Reliance Industries Ambani, smile in Mumbai

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (C), Chairman of Tata Group Ratan Tata (L) and Chief of Reliance Industries Mukesh Ambani, smile during Clinton's meeting with Indian business leaders in Mumbai July 18, 2009. Clinton on Saturday said she expected to finalise a defence agreement essential to allowing U.S. companies to sell sophisticated arms to India. REUTERS/Handout (INDIA POLITICS BUSINESS)
http://townhall.com/photos/2009/07/1...mile_in_mumbai

From 2007. It appears that the workers "fears have been realized. Hillary Clinton opened the door for TATA and is, in my opinion, the queen of outsourcing and the importation of foreign workers being imported to take American jobs.

Hillary Clinton's help to Tata (TCS) & Scare Tactics May Backfire

Los Angles, July 30, 2007
Gary Singh

• In 2003, Tata Consultancy Services of India (TCS) opened a office in Buffalo with the help of Hillary Rodham Clinton and told a newspaper that it might hire as many as 200 people.
• Tata has done more to undercut workers in upstate New York than it has helped

In 2003, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton helped the high-tech firm Tata Consultancy Services of India (TCS) to open a office in Buffalo, N.Y. by hoping that it would bring jobs to the area. Clinton later said the deal showed that outsourcing firms could create jobs both in their home countries and in the United States.

As a part of its program to expand its US presence, TCS will provide advanced IT training to new recruits. The training center is aptly named "Chrysalis", a word signifying the evolution of a larva into a butterfly. Company executives explained that the name alludes to the transformation of bright new talent into advanced IT professionals who would lead the technology industry in the future. The firm said it had already hired 20 new recruits, primarily from western New York, and had plans to triple that number by the middle of next year. But over that same period, Tata sought H-1B visa certifications to import nearly 500 foreign computer programmers and other specialists to upstate New York.

Since 2003,"the reality is that it probably created many more jobs for workers overseas and displaced lots of American workers according to leading news papers.

NRI Sudesh Agnihotra from New York told our representative that NYC residence are very up-set that about500 foreign computer programmers and other specialists were dumped in their State and they had no gain.

Clinton always said, the United States benefits by admitting high-tech workers from abroad. She backs proposals to increase the number of temporary visas for skilled foreigners.

This is also surprise to learn that when she addresses the union audiences and Democratic crowds, she does not mention her support for expanding foreign-worker visas
Most of the NRI supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton are confused and up set of the out-come of Tata (TCS) deal.

How Hillary can claim to support American workers if she is also helping Indian outsourcing companies and proposing more worker visas.
--------------------------
Read Full Story
Clinton woos the outsourcers feared by U.S. workers
The senator's efforts to bring an Indian firm to Buffalo, which yielded 'about 10' jobs, illustrates the bind she faces.
By Peter Wallsten, Times Staff Writer
July 30, 2007

BUFFALO, N.Y. — To many labor unions and high-tech workers, the Indian giant Tata Consultancy Services is a serious threat — a company that has helped move U.S. jobs to India while sending thousands of foreign workers on temporary visas to the United States.
So when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) came to this struggling city to announce some good news, her choice of partners was something of a surprise.

Joining Tata Consultancy's chief executive at a downtown hotel, Clinton announced that the company would open a software development office in Buffalo and form a research partnership with a local university. Tata told a newspaper that it might hire as many as 200 people.

The 2003 announcement had clear benefits for the senator and the company: Tata received good press, and Clinton burnished her credentials as a champion for New York's depressed upstate region.

But less noticed was how the event signaled that Clinton, who portrays herself as a fighter for American workers, had aligned herself with Indian American business leaders and Indian companies feared by the labor movement.

Now, as Clinton runs for president, that signal is echoing loudly.

Clinton is successfully wooing wealthy Indian Americans, many of them business leaders with close ties to their native country and an interest in protecting outsourcing laws and expanding access to worker visas. Her campaign has held three fundraisers in the Indian American community recently, one of which raised close to $3 million, its sponsor told an Indian news organization.

But in Buffalo, the fruits of the Tata deal have been hard to find. The company, which called the arrangement Clinton's "brainchild," says "about 10" employees work here. Tata says most of the new employees were hired from around Buffalo. It declines to say whether any of the new jobs are held by foreigners, who make up 90% of Tata's 10,000-employee workforce in the United States.

As for the research deal with the state university that Clinton announced, school administrators say that three attempts to win government grants with Tata for health-oriented research were unsuccessful and that no projects are imminent.

The Tata deal underscores Clinton's bind as she attempts to lead a Democratic Party that is turning away from the free-trade policies of her husband's administration in the 1990s and is becoming more skeptical of trade deals and temporary-worker visas.

Like many businesses and economists, Clinton says that the United States benefits by admitting high-tech workers from abroad. She backs proposals to increase the number of temporary visas for skilled foreigners.

The Tata deal shows the difficulty of proving concrete benefits to U.S. workers from the visa system. Since 2003, the year its Buffalo office opened, Tata and its affiliates have sought permission to bring more than 1,600 foreign high-tech workers to the state, including at least 495 to the upstate region and 45 to Buffalo, according to government data. Tata has brought additional workers into the country under a second visa program whose numbers have not been disclosed.

Some U.S. worker organizations say Clinton cannot claim to support American workers if she is also helping Indian outsourcing companies and proposing more worker visas.

"It's just two-faced," said John Miano, founder of the Programmers Guild, one of several high-tech worker organizations that have sprung up as outsourcing has expanded. "We see her undermining U.S. workers and helping the offshoring business, and then she comes back to the U.S. and says, 'I'm concerned about your pain.' "

Among Indian American activists, Clinton's work with Tata has been seen as a sign of her independence from outsourcing skeptics within her party — and a break from the Democrats' 2004 presidential nominee, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who lambasted "Benedict Arnold CEOs" for shipping jobs overseas.

The main lobbying organization for the Indian-American community, USINPAC, cites the Tata deal as one of Clinton's top three achievements as a senator — and evidence of a turnabout, in its view, from her past criticism of outsourcing. "Even though she was against outsourcing at the beginning of her political career," the USINPAC website says, "she has since changed her position and now maintains that offshoring brings as much economic value to the United States as to the country where services are outsourced, especially India."

Clinton regularly reinforces that view. When CNN anchorman Lou Dobbs, an outsourcing critic, pressed her on the Tata deal in 2004, Clinton responded: "Well, of course I know that they outsource jobs, that they've actually brought jobs to Buffalo. They've created 10 jobs in Buffalo and have told me and the Buffalo community that they intend to be a source of new jobs in the area, because, you know, outsourcing does work both ways."

This month, she made a similar case to a conference of Indian workers in Silicon Valley, saying she supported an expansion of visas. "Foreign skilled workers contribute greatly to our U.S. technological development," she told the group via satellite.

Clinton acknowledged the strains on American workers and called for more job-training programs. But her words seemed to distance her from those who would end outsourcing. Increased U.S. job losses, she said, could cause Americans to "seek more protection against what they view as unfair competition."

The Tata deal, she said in a 2005 stop in India, exemplified the cooperation that will "help to prevent the kind of negative feelings that could be stirred up" by critics of the global marketplace. She called those critics "short-sighted."

Today, on the campaign trail, Clinton often strikes a different tone. Addressing union audiences and Democratic crowds, she does not highlight her support for expanding foreign-worker visas. Instead, Clinton often laments a system that, as she told a government workers union last month, rewards companies for "moving our jobs overseas." "Outsourcing is a problem, and it's one that I've dealt with as a senator from New York," Clinton said during a Democratic candidates debate in June. She said she had tried "to stand against the tide of outsourcing."

Clinton aides say the Tata deal is just one example of her broader efforts to help upstate New York. Whatever the results, said spokesman Philippe Reines, the effort showed Clinton helping to build a high-tech future for a region long focused on manufacturing.
Buffalo's population has fallen by half over 50 years, as automotive and other manufacturing jobs moved overseas. Resentment is so high that voters last year nearly dumped a longtime Republican congressman for an anti-trade Democrat, who had made outsourcing his biggest issue.

For Clinton, a newcomer to New York when she ran for the Senate in 2000, the upstate region was considered a challenge — a traditionally conservative area that did not participate in the economic prosperity during her husband's presidency. So, as a candidate, she pledged to use tax credits and other incentives to create 200,000 jobs in the region.

In 2002, Clinton took a group of Indian business executives on a tour of the region and to a meeting with administrators from the state university in Buffalo. The group included Tata Consultancy Services, an information technology consulting firm that is part of Tata Group, a conglomerate with interests in electricity, steel, aviation, cars and hotels.

At the time, Tata Consultancy had two offices in the state — both in New York City to service Wall Street clients.

But a year after the tour, the company flew Clinton to join its chief executive, S. Ramadorai, in Buffalo for an announcement: It would open an office there.

Tata also signed a memorandum of understanding with a university research center to pursue discoveries in genetics, drugs and other areas. In a news release, Tata said that deal "will eventually lead to opportunities for training, recruitment and job creation in Buffalo."
"There was a sense of excitement on the part of the community," said Anthony M. Masiello, Buffalo's mayor at the time, "to have a company like Tata that would not traditionally look at coming to western New York."

But soon the company faded from public view, said Andrew J. Rudnick, president and CEO of the Buffalo-Niagara Partnership, an economic development group in which Tata was initially active. "They told us their business strategy had changed," he said. "The reality is that the number of people that Tata is employing here now doesn't seem to be significant."

At the University at Buffalo, Bruce A. Holm, director of a research center pursuing projects with Tata, conceded that the partnership had not played out as hoped. But he said that progress was still possible.

Tata officials say the company has hired 50 people from the Buffalo area in the last four years but most have left or have been transferred to other locations. They say the Buffalo operations remain important to the company and a part of the civic life of the city.
But critics say that Tata has done more to undercut workers in upstate New York than it has helped — and that Clinton is wrong to argue that exposing U.S. workers to competition from foreign workers is helping both groups.

Since Tata arrived in Buffalo, "the reality is that it probably created many more jobs for workers overseas and displaced lots of American workers," said Ronil Hira, a public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a prominent critic of outsourcing.

A report released by two senators said that Tata was one of the biggest users of foreign-worker visas in the United States, employing more than 7,900 visa recipients last year. The large number of visas suggests that companies are circumventing laws designed to protect American workers, Sens. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said in their report.

Clinton and many other lawmakers have called for cracking down on visa abuse. At the same time, she has backed an increase in the number of foreigners admitted to the U.S. each year under the main type of visa for high-tech workers. The cap is 65,000 each year; companies are seeking 115,000.

And her campaign continues to telegraph — sometimes in front of Indian American audiences — that she sees benefits to a globalized world.

Three weeks ago, her husband drew applause at a conference of 14,000 Indian Americans in Washington as he extolled the benefits of "open borders, easy travel, easy immigration." He said the outsourcing debate bothered him because it failed to acknowledge the contributions of Indians who settled in the U.S. The same day, he headlined a fundraiser at the conference for his wife's campaign.

Labor union leaders, who haven't decided whom to endorse for president, say they have watched the Tata deal and Clinton's statements on outsourcing.

"People do want to see from her some recognition that the outsourcing of these service jobs isn't a good thing for the U.S. economy," said Thea M. Lee, policy director of the AFL-CIO. "It's a little bit of an open question where Sen. Clinton's going to end up on outsourcing."

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton announced in March 2003 that the high-tech firm Tata Consultancy Services of India was opening an office in Buffalo, N.Y., and would bring jobs to the area. Clinton later said the deal showed that outsourcing firms could create jobs both in their home countries and in the United States. Tata says it has created about 10 jobs in Buffalo and, since 2003, hired 50 local workers. But over that same period, Tata sought H-1B visa certifications to import nearly 500 foreign computer programmers and other specialists to upstate New York.

City H-1B visas* sought
Schenectady... 101
Webster... 94
Albany... 87
Rochester... 83
Buffalo... 45
Waterford... 40
Olean... 31
Syracuse... 10
Pittsford ... 3
Orchard Park... 1
Total ... 495
--
*H-1B visas allow U.S. employers to hire high-skilled international workers for up to six years. Obtaining certification from the Department of Labor does not necessarily mean the company secured visas, but that is the only public indicator of where a company intends to deploy foreign workers. Whereas H-1B certification data is public, similar information is not available for L-1 visas, which accounted for more of Tata's workers in 2006, according to a U.S. Senate report.

Source: Times analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Labor, Division of Foreign Labor Certification

http://www.nriinternet.com/NRIdemocr...obs_in_NYC.htm

Read more at:
http://www.alipac.us/f12/southern-ca...ements-317367/

If you are having problems with Obamacare, look no further than Infosys.
Obamacare Opens Outsourcing Window for Infosys: Corporate India

byKartikay Mehrotra

7:33 AM CST
January 17, 2013

Infosys Ltd. was started by seven people including S.D. Shibulal, chief executive officer of Infosys seen in this photo, with $250 borrowed from their wives in 1981. Photographer: Adeel Halim/Bloomberg

Jan. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Infosys Ltd., India’s second-largest software exporter, is tapping demand from U.S. President Barack Obama’s push to overhaul the nation’s health-care system to include an additional 30 million Americans.

The Bangalore-based company has won four state contracts, one valued at more than $100 million, and is vying for business in four more before a 2014 deadline to build online exchanges that will link customers to insurance plans, said Ashok Vemuri, the head of the company’s unit in the Americas. Obama plans to expand medical coverage through the Affordable Care Act, which includes setting up marketplaces where consumers can evaluate and select service providers.

Obama’s demand to build the exchanges and maintain electronic health records may help Infosys and rivals including Accenture Plc counter slowing business from banks and factories. Spending on health care may exceed that for defense and social security by 2015, according to Christopher Flavelle, an analyst at Bloomberg Government. U.S. states governed by Obama’s Democratic Party could lead the change, Vemuri said.

“The U.S. government is cutting defense spending and increasing health care expenditures, which is of great benefit to us,” Vemuri said in an interview. Governors of Democratic states, such as Illinois, may “take some initiative,” he said.

The exchanges are designed to allow consumers who don’t have medical coverage from their employers to easily compare health plans and then buy insurance online and through telephone services. The marketplace will help the federal government subsidize the cost for those who can’t afford coverage while increasing the number of Americans who qualify for health insurance.

‘Biggest Challenge’

“The biggest challenge facing the states in 2013 is information technology,” PricewaterhouseCoopers said in a report this month. “Many are overhauling their existing Medicaid eligibility systems and designing an exchange infrastructure to create a single, seamless entry point.”

Infosys is following Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. and HCL Technologies Ltd., founded by billionaire Shiv Nadar, in seeking customers in the segment as the European debt crisis and a sputtering economy in the U.S. prompt banks to slow spending on information technology. The World Bank yesterday cut its global growth forecast for this year as austerity measures, high unemployment and low business confidence weigh on economies in developed nations.

Cognizant earned 25 percent of its revenue from writing code for drugmakers and state agencies in the quarter ended Sept. 30, while the industry accounted for 11.9 percent of HCL’s revenue in the three months ended Dec. 31. Banks and finance companies made up 35 percent of Infosys’ sales in the three months ended Dec. 31, while health care was 1.5 percent.

Not ‘Fast Enough’

“Infosys just haven’t been fast enough to tap the health-care industry, which is why their share of revenue is so low,” said Harit Shah, an analyst with Mumbai-based Nirmal Bang Institutional Equities. Banking, financial services and insurance “has become a mature vertical, posting just incremental growth. The IT firms will fill that void with energy utilities, retail and, of course, health care contracts,” he said.

Infosys on Jan. 11 said net income was 23.7 billion rupees ($432 million) in the third quarter, little changed from a year earlier. That surpassed the 22.4 billion-rupee median of 42 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

The company’s shares surged by a record 17 percent on Jan. 11 after it raised its full-year sales forecast. They gained 1.1 percent to 2,797.95.2 rupees in Mumbai after declining 16 percent last year. The benchmark BSE India Sensitive Index rose 26 percent in 2012.

Obama’s Stand

Obama’s stand against outsourcing, promising a ban on tax breaks for American companies that move jobs overseas, may prompt states to find software providers based in the U.S. In 2010, former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland banned state agencies from purchasing outsourced services.

After Governor John Kasich took office in 2011, he continued the policy while allowing for a waiver application if the only way to obtain the services is from outside the U.S., Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said in a telephone interview.

“From a policy standpoint, you want a quality product that’s easy to use,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, a former White House health-care policy adviser and one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act. “An issue as important as health care is no place to get caught up in the politics of outsourcing.”

The president’s rhetoric on outsourcing may not deter companies seeking to tap insurers and states for business that Technology Holdings forecasts will expand 9 percent a year to $15 billion by 2016.

Illinois Exchange

Infosys, started by seven people including Chief Executive Officer S.D. Shibulal with $250 borrowed from their wives in 1981, is vying with Cognizant, Xerox Corp. and two rivals to help the state of Illinois, the country’s fifth-biggest, build an exchange that Governor Pat Quinn predicts will serve 1 million people by 2016, spokesman Mike Claffey said in an e-mail. The marketplace would commence operation in 2015, pending legislative approval, he said.

States will also need help to run and maintain the exchanges, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. The marketplaces may become “self sustaining” only after two to three years, Infosys wrote in a 2010 request for comment from Illinois.

“Health care is absolutely going to be a huge growth area for Indian outsourcers including Infosys,” Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. and Wipro Ltd., said Vivek Subramanyam, managing director of Mumbai-based Technology Holdings, which advises companies on mergers & acquisitions. While Infosys trails behind companies like Cognizant, “the industry is going to have a lot of money to go around in the near future,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kartikay Mehrotra in New Delhi atkmehrotra2@bloomberg.net

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...orporate-india

US2020 and Pres. Clinton Announce Competition to Spur STEM Mentoring

June 18, 2013 by admin



US2020 Signs New Partners Tata Consultancy Services and HP at Clinton Global Initiative’s “CGI America” Event

Last week at CGI America, a nationwide gathering hosted by the Clinton Global Initiative, President Clinton announced that US2020, a new initiative chaired by a Skoll Awardee that aims to engage one million science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professionals by the year 2020, will launch a city competition to increase the amount of STEM mentoring in communities nationally. New US2020 partners were also announced at the event, including Tata Consultancy Services and HP.

Joining current US2020 Founding Leadership Partners Cisco, Cognizant, and SanDisk, Tata Consultancy Services and HP will collectively work towards US2020’s goal of mobilizing one million STEM professionals to mentor students by the year 2020. Through an online matching platform, US2020 will help place STEM volunteers into high impact mentoring opportunities with top nonprofits working across different grades, settings, and delivery models. As more companies join this effort, their early leadership will help catalyze a culture shift in which mentoring becomes the new normal for STEM professionals, much like pro bono work is in the legal profession.

US2020 and its corporate partners are taking strides to strengthen the STEM career pipeline for traditionally underrepresented students by connecting them to professionals in the field who will serve as mentors and teachers. These skilled volunteers will bring subjects to life and provide engaging moments of discovery to students through real-world, hands-on projects and academic coaching facilitated by nonprofits like The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF), Citizen Schools, and others. Ultimately, these students will have access to career opportunities they might never have considered and will help fill the STEM jobs of the future that will keep the country economically competitive.

To push the US2020 effort forward, the initiative and its partners launched the US2020 City Competition with President Clinton during the closing plenary of CGI America. The strategy will select and support between three to five cities that propose plans to mobilize STEM volunteers through partnerships with leading science and technology businesses. The chosen cities will be offered $1 million or more in cash and in-kind support to bring together businesses, nonprofits, city governments, and local philanthropies around a coordinated effort to spark the minds of students across their communities.
The US2020 City Competition is inspired by other successful awards and strategies, including the Obama administration’s Race to the Top and Investing in Innovation (i3) competitions, X PRIZES, and the Ashoka Changemakers and Carnegie Corporation’s “Partnering for Excellence” Competition.

“We believe it is essential to offer engaging learning experiences with STEM professionals to students who need their support and the opportunity for cities to utilize their STEM workforce to educate and prepare the next generation of STEM professionals,” said Eric Schwarz, co-founder and CEO of Citizen Schools and Executive Chairman of US2020.
The demand for STEM skills in the workforce is projected to increase and outpace the number of students working towards a STEM profession. Students of all levels, particularly girls and underrepresented minorities, receive little exposure to opportunities and experiences with STEM experts. A recent study from Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program found that STEM jobs are a major economic driver across the U.S. with 20 percent of all jobs in the country requiring a “high level of knowledge” in at least one STEM field.

“To succeed on tomorrow’s world stage, students must today have a solid foundation in STEM and be fluent in the technologies that will power the global economy of the 21st Century,” said Surya Kant, President of TCS’ North America, UK and Europe operations. “TCS is proud to bring not only our technological expertise to this effort, but also the passion and commitment that our employees have in lending their talents to positively impact their communities, across the country and around the world.”

Tata Consultancy Services is a Founding Leadership Partner of US2020, providing more than $500,000 in cash and in-kind support. Tata Consultancy Services will be the lead partner in developing US2020’s web-based matching technology to connect STEM mentors with high-quality volunteer placements. HP is also joining the US2020 initiative as a Founding Member. Both Tata Consultancy Services and HP are aspiring to get 20 percent of their STEM workforce mentoring students by 2020.

“HP’s aim is to enable the next generation of leaders and innovators to leverage their full potential in an IT-driven world. Our employees have been working with Citizen Schools for many years as part of our commitment to offering skills and time,” says Gabi Zedlmayer, Vice President Sustainability and Social Innovation at HP.

In partnership with founding Fortune 500 companies Cisco, Cognizant, and SanDisk and founding partners AfterCollege, Citizen Schools, CodeNow, HotChalk, National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, and TEALS, US2020 has pledged to work over the next few years to recruit hundreds of additional education non-profits and school districts that will commit to high standards in STEM mentoring, common and transparent metrics, and efforts to scale high-quality placement for STEM mentors in both school day and extended day, extended week, and extended year settings.

http://www.skollfoundation.org/us202...tem-mentoring/

Congress pretending to care while intending to elevate the allowable H1-B visa by nearly 3 times. That is so full of hypocrisy. I have to admit that those are the real representatives of American voters. Until the voters admit that is what they are doing, they will keep doing it. Mistakes unacknowledged are never corrected! I still see no hope from this Congress or 2016 election. I suspect that this hearing was window dressing only!

Okay, enough is enough. This is the case that needs to be the basis of a worker protection law that prevents companies like SoCal Edison or any other company from:

a) firing American workers to fill H1B visas (yes, I know it's already against the law, but the law needs to be strengthened so that there are criminal penalties against any individual who participates in the firings and hirings, not just fines against the company,

b) from requiring non-disclosure agreements that require fired employees from concealing the nature of their termination to collect their termination package, and these should be laws that apply to the individuals involved in suggesting the arrangement, drafting the agreements, hiring an outside law firm to draft the agreements, presenting the agreements, explaining the agreements, discussing the agreements, obtaining the employee's signature on the agreements, notarizing the agreements, or in any other manner participating in the execution of such agreements, because these are simple straightforward hush agreements, bribery agreements, blackmail agreements, and illegal agreements by all standards of US contract and criminal law, for the purpose of concealing crimes,

c) any outside firm, domestic or foreign, that supplies foreign workers to fill spots of terminated American workers, with or without knowledge (they should have known), would be barred from obtaining any visa for any foreign worker to work in the US in perpetuity and all existing visas already issued by that firm would be revoked and the visa holders scheduled for immediate deportation,

d) any public official, federal, state or otherwise, elected, appointed or hired who aides any firm in any capacity that sells visa services or hires visa workers or promotes visas, domestic or foreign, would be barred immediately and in perpetuity from ever working for the federal government in any capacity, elected, appointed or hired and e) any 501 C 3 including founders, board of directions, managers, executives and donors who aid foreign workers in any capacity for any reason would be barred immediately and in perpetuity from working for the federal government in any capacity, being involved in any 501 C 3 or 501 C 4 entity, and would face criminal charges for exploiting their US entity tax designation to undermine American workers to violate the purpose, intent and spirit of US immigration law, US labor law, and US civil rights law,

e) any trade agreement that includes provisions for immigration into the US from that country or countries would be null and void as a matter of law,

f) any individual US citizen or other incorporated entity complainant would by statute have full legal standing to file civil suits against such defendants including those involved with trade agreements containing immigration provisions, as well as the foreign workers who took jobs in the United States when American workers were available.

Furthermore, we need a 10 Year Moratorium on Immigration so that we have time to sort out this mess, correct it, and take the measures needed to ensure that what's happening in the US with regards to all immigration, "legal" and illegal, is stopped and in such a manner that it never ever happens again in this country.

According to a Fox News report, the company will save about $40,000 dollars per worker, about $16 million dollars a year.

Really? A company with revenues of at least $12.6 billion a year and net profit of $849 million wants to violate federal law and disgrace itself by abusing 400 American Workers through the H1B visa program over $16 million a year, before they eventually realize that the new 400 workers will make mistakes and cost them 10 times that before it's over?

No, it's over now. Americans are done with this betrayal. We're demanding an immediate 10 Year Moratorium on Immigration so this travesty of betraying our own citizens through the importation of foreign workers through federal immigration programs will not happen again in the United States of America.