Thread: How Well-Educated Americans are Treated in America

http://washtech.org/news/industry/displ ... ntent=5363

September 14, 2009
WashTech News

How Well-Educated, Hard-Working Americans are Treated in America
Rennie Sawade

Many American IT workers are being forced out of their careers, while corporations continue to offshore jobs and hire non-immigrant guest workers on corporate Visas, such as the H-1B and L-1.

Some of these American IT workers are being forced into homelessness, due to the lack of an adequate social safety net in this country. One such homeless IT worker is Bruce Richall, an IT consultant in Connecticut. You can read his story on the BBC news site.

After his lay-off from a bank, he has been unable to find another job. After going through his savings, he was forced to leave his apartment. "I now sleep in the back of my car, while I wait for a bed to become available at the homeless shelter. I call it The Hotel Honda."

Another homeless IT worker, Rob, is blogging about his experiences. He also continues to write about such topics as "cloud computing", which he feels is the next major paradigm shift after virtualization.

Another IT worker, Alice (not her real name), was laid of by Microsoft back in January. She worked on a team of 7, four of which (including the manager) are on guest-worker visas. She was the only one on her team that was affected by the lay-off. None of the other guest-workers were laid off. She also states in her testimony:

Guest workers occupy every management position at every level of my former management chain. The lowest level American manager is the Senior Vice President, a second level direct report to the CEO, Steve Ballmer.



Here are some more excerpts from her testimony:


I am an American citizen, displaced Microsoft employee, and one of the MS1400 (1,400 workers laid off from Microsoft Corporation January 22, 2009).

I have worked in the high tech industry for over 20 years and never been unemployed. I grew up in a typical middle class American family, the daughter of a career Army Sergeant (POW and recipient of two Purple Hearts and a Silver Star) and Pharmacist. I attended Goucher College on a full scholarship, thanks in part to Senator Paul Sarbanes.

In 1985, I completed my MBA in Computer Applications from New York University, attending graduate school nights and weekends while working full time. I started out working as a file clerk for a company that provided tuition reimbursement so I could pay for graduate school. Through hard work and perseverance, I worked my way up the corporate ladder, transitioning my career from pink collar jobs to Systems Analyst and promoted to Vice President, JP Morgan at age 31.

In 1992, I transitioned into my career into Software Sales and Marketing working for top firms including IBM and Microsoft. In 2004, I joined Microsoft as a Marketing Manager, and have been working in the same role as Product Manager, Microsoft Office since May 2006.

On January 22, 2009, I was the only person on a team of seven people laid off.

My team of seven, a supervisor and six Microsoft Office Product Managers, in similar roles, employed four guest workers. Three of these guest workers have worked in the United States less than one year. All guest workers on my team retained their jobs as full-time US employees of Microsoft Corporation.

Despite my seniority, contributions, and qualifications, the management team of my organization, exclusively guest workers , chose to lay me off and retain less experienced, less qualified guest workers, including two L-visa guest workers in similar roles, each working in the United States less than six months.

That same day Microsoft also notified me "as a result of the reorganization and restructuring at Microsoft Corporation, your position is being permanently eliminated as part of a layoff."

The director of my department informed me that my role was not "strategic", therefore my position was permanently eliminated, and I was laid off.

Later I learned that my role had been split between a Microsoft full-time employee and contractor replacement(s).
A top corporate priority project I initiated was immediately re-assigned to another employee.

This employee assumed my role as project manager and is continuing my work with the vendor I hired to help me, on the work I specified, to complete milestones I defined, and invoice against the Purchase Order I opened.

Microsoft has engaged Artech Information an H1-B outsourcing company, to replace parts of my role with a contractor.

Imagine my surprise, just three weeks after I was laid off, to receive an email and voice mail from Artech Info on February 12, 2009 with an urgent need to fill a contractor position at Microsoft for a Product Manager.
The contractor job description - a watered down version of my former eliminated position!

The recruiter from Artech informed me 02/12/2009 that the maximum wage for the job was $32/hour. This wage, 50% lower than my salary one month earlier, is 63% lower than the 2007 median BLS (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics) wage for the job role, Marketing Manager. According to the BLS, there are an abundance of qualified Americans to fill these highly coveted roles.

According to Artech, the lower wage was "due to economy".

Artech needed to know my intent to apply for the position immediately.

Why? They had a previously scheduled meeting the next day with the hiring manager to present candidates.

Sadly, my situation is not unique.


Alice was just notified a couple days ago that she does not qualify for the Emergency Extension of Unemployment Benefits. She was also just notified by her mortgage company that she does not qualify to have her mortgage renegotiated.

Another tech-worker, Diane Drozdowski, was forced out of her job at American Express in Phoenix, AZ. After her manager used "bully tactics and psychological warfare" to try to get her to quit, resulting in a mental breakdown, she was replaced by two Indian workers based in India. American Express flew these Indian workers to Phoenix and forced her to train them, upon threat of losing her severance pay.

Diane Drozdowski's testimony is below:


I had been working for the American Express service center in Phoenix, AZ for four years. I was basically a "data miner" for the Merchant Services group. I had access to all the different databases and data warehouses that captured merchant data. I worked with internal customers to query the data in order to provide reports for merchants or to drive business initiatives by locating process gaps and using the data to prove the gap existed and to provide insight to possible solutions based on my knowledge of the data and the business.

For three years, I received exceptional reviews. Each year I was with the company, I received a better review than the previous year. That all stopped when an Indian woman took over the management roll for my team. She instituted monthly one-to-one sessions, which I thought would be a great way to provide me constructive and positive feedback to better my work and my career. That was definitely not the case. In each one-to-one I was met with her blatant hostility toward me. She picked apart everything I did and did not give me positive feedback. According to her, there was always something I should've done better and faster. I am admittedly a perfectionist, so I took her negative feedback very much to heart and tried harder than I ever had before in my life to meet and exceed expectations; whatever her expectations were, because I could never get her to tell me exactly what she expected.

Instead of things getting better, things got worse. Every single one-to-one I had with her, she came down on me for not doing a good enough job. Once when I was at her desk waiting to have an informal meeting with another colleague, she announced to me very loudly that I better start trying harder and doing better work, or I would get a "does not meet expectations" on my review. This astounded me, as I have never in my entire business career gotten a review like that. If anything, I'm always the one who excels and achieves the "goes beyond expectations" review. Plus, since she said this in a public setting, my peers sitting around us heard this, and I was publicly humiliated.

On another occasion, I was informed I was being considered to participate in a grand jury for a federal court case. I did not have a backup at work. My backups were laid off years ago, so I had been doing the jobs of three people with no way to take time off since management had never established a backup for when I was gone. When I took vacation time, work just didn't get done, as no one else in the department had the skill set to be able to actively step into my roll and provide adequate backup support. Instead of understanding that jury duty is my civic duty as an American citizen, my manager instead put pressure on me to get out of going. The rules around jury duty have gotten much stricter in the past years, and the government has made it very difficult to dodge jury duty. Seeing as I had no disability to keep me from going, I had no recourse but to go along with it, and I was on call for jury duty for approximately three months. Each time I'd call in to see if my group had been picked for duty, I dreaded having to tell her the status, because this would incite a barrage of hostility from her. She told me that if I were to get called to go to the court house that I should "get drunk first" so that they would kick me out. This upset me, as I do not drink because my grandmother died from complications of alcoholism. She also pressured me to "act like a crazy person" to get kicked out, and also to "tell them you endorse (name of local politician withheld)" to get kicked out. This really upset me as well, as I do support the local politician she named, and it made me feel like there was something wrong with me for feeling that way.

The last straw for me was the day she ripped into me for my supposed lack of good time management skills. I have always prided myself on my time management skills and have been given nothing but positive feedback from customers, peers, and past managers for my sense of urgency and my timely communications regarding project turn around times. It was common for me to fulfill a request for data in as little as 30 minutes from time of receipt, even though department standard was three to five business days from time of receipt. But instead of applauding this, she directed hostility toward me. She requested that instead of sending an email to a customer to set expectations of a turn around time for a request (if I knew it was going to take longer than three to five business days to complete) that I wait and send one big email at the end of each day to everyone who had requested data to let them know the turnaround timeline expectations. When I repeated this back to her to make sure I understood her expectations, she immediately took on a defensive and hostile tone with me. She replied that wasn't what she wanted me to do, and that instead, I should go to the requestor's desk in person to set expectations verbally face-to-face. I found this confusing, because an email took me 30 seconds to write and send (plus it provided an audit trail). Getting up from my desk and trying to find customers in the huge service center building seemed like it would take considerably more time than just shooting out a quick email. When I questioned her on this, she blew up at me. I remember her asking me in a very hostile tone, "Why do you always have to do everything I tell you to?" And then I remember her telling me that I need to be thinking of ways on my own to work most efficiently. I explained that I was already doing what I thought was most efficient for the company. I honestly can't tell you what she said after that, because my brain felt like somebody flipped the "off" switch on it. The last thing I remember is her just hanging up on me.

I somehow managed to contact my husband at work, and I was so upset that he was scared for my safety and immediately came and got me. I called my doctor's office and told them I thought I was having a mental breakdown. They booked an appointment for me to see one of the physicians immediately. I remember the lady on the phone asking if I was having suicidal thoughts, and I told her that yes, I was. The realization of feeling as though I'd rather be dead further drove me into breakdown. I was advised to go to the emergency room immediately if my condition worsened before my scheduled doctor appointment.

At the appointment, the physician observed my physical and mental symptoms and diagnosed a mental breakdown. He advised me to not go back to work for minimally six weeks in order to recuperate and heal from the experience and the toxic work environment.

My husband called my manager to let her know I'd be out on medical leave for minimally six weeks. She demanded that he tell her what was wrong with me, but we knew our rights under the HIPAA act. Technically, she was not allowed to ask what was wrong with me. My husband remarked that she took on an angry tone with him when he refused to tell her about my medical situation.

During the first six weeks of my medical leave, I spent the first two to three weeks in a trance like state. I had been put on prescription medications to treat depression and anxiety. I was instructed by my psychiatrist to take Xanax during the day to keep from having panic attacks and to take Xanax at night just to be able to sleep without having nightmares about my job. I began psychotherapy immediately and went to sessions one to two times per week. My psychotherapist also concluded I had experienced a mental breakdown and advised me that my manager had used bully tactics and psychological warfare on me to push me to my breaking point. My manager had put me in a "fight or flight" situation, as I had been trying to control and repress my composure for the five months she had served as my manager. My body's response was flight. The physiological response of the body to flight is to just shut down to protect the brain and body from further harm. I wished I could just die, and I felt paranoid for weeks thinking people were following me in my car. I couldn't even go to the grocery store by myself, because I thought everyone there was staring at me and knew how worthless I was. I could not concentrate and had a very hard time speaking. Thoughts would come into my head and before I could even voice them, they were gone. I often felt like I was just a lost soul.

My recuperation was slow, and by the time six weeks had come and gone, both my doctor and my psychotherapist felt it best to take another six weeks off from work to make sure my recovery was stable. There was fear on behalf of my health professionals that returning to work too soon might incite another breakdown, because I still did not have the appropriate amount of strength in my brain to be able to deal with the toxic environment at American Express.

Within a few weeks after my medical leave had began, a teammate let me know that my boss had posted two data analyst positions just like my position, but they were open to Indian candidates only (in the American Express India center in New Delhi). Upon my return to work from my medical leave, I asked my manager about these positions. She told me they were being hired to offer me backup, and that I'd be the lead over the team and remain the central U.S. data contact for Merchant Services. But I could see the writing on the wall. It was no surprise to me when I was pulled into a conference room a month after my return and was told my job had been migrated to India. I was told I had 45 days left with the company, and that the two people from India who'd be taking my job would be flown to Arizona for me to train. Not only did they take my job and my livelihood, but the ultimate insult was that I had to train them to do my job, and if I didn't train them well, American Express threatened they would withhold my 12 weeks of severance pay. So I spent the next 45 days training these men the best I could. Neither of them had experience with data query nor writing SQL code. It was my opinion that they lacked the skill set necessary to do the job as well or better than me. It was as if they had literally hired these two individuals off the street with no skills and no background. Their only qualifying "skills" seemed to be the color of their skin and their ethnicity.

At the time, I was making approximately $47,000 a year. The two Indians taking my job told me they were getting paid $10,000 a year each. How can I even come close to being able to compete with that? Who in America can support a family on $10,000 a year without taking state aid?

In summary, it is my opinion that my manager purposely created a hostile work environment in order to make me quit so that the company wouldn't have to pay out the severance package to me. I could not go to my director for help, because she was a huge advocate of my manager. I did not feel comfortable going to her, as I knew it would be my word against my manager's word. That's a battle that I'll lose every time.

I also feel that I am the victim of reverse discrimination. I firmly believe I was forced out of the company because my manager does not like Americans, especially Caucasians. Since I left the company, many of my colleagues have also had their jobs migrated to India. On my old team alone, two new workers have been hired to backfill positions, and one is from India and the other is from Pakistan.

So now, here I sit at home on this computer writing my story to you. I am well educated (BA in Sociology, Indiana University, 1994), I have 15 years of work experience, and I am unemployed. Due to the bad economy, I have so far been unsuccessful in finding a new job. I'm over qualified for what little jobs are out there. The jobs I am qualified for are not paying very much, because companies know they can hire a foreign worker at a much cheaper rate than what Americans demand. I'm not even getting called for first interviews. Once I provide my salary requirements, I get the "no thanks" letter. I'm very fearful of going on an interview, because my manager made me feel like I am worthless and that nobody else would want to hire me. What she did to me was long-term psychological damage, and I continue to recuperate from it to this day. There is not a single day that goes by where I don't think about what happened to me and how my manager and that company treated me. It has forever changed my life.

I'm now drawing a weekly unemployment claim, for which I receive $237 a week. I can barely pay my bills or support my two children.

I wish somebody could give me a good explanation as to how sending American jobs to India or giving American jobs to H1-B visa holders is helping the U.S. economy and American workers. Until you spend a day in my shoes or the shoes of another American citizen who lost his/her job to foreign workers, I ask you how you can do anything less than support the H1B and L1 Visa Reform Act. This is just my story, but there are millions more like it all across our country. Perhaps politicians should get down in the trenches with people like me; people who spent a lot of money and time to get college degrees; people who spent many years building upon their careers; people who have worked 60 hours or more a week for years in the hopes of "getting ahead." We are now sadly unemployed. We are the forgotten Americans who have been left behind to suffer while we continue to watch our fellow Americans losing their jobs to foreigners.

I have never been on welfare in my life, and it sickens me now that I must depend on it. But knowing I need to feed my children and keep a safe roof over their heads makes me do things I thought I'd never have to do in life. Goodbye, my pride.


Even union members are not immune to being replaced by guest workers. Char was an employee of AT&T and a member of CWA in 2001 when AT&T closed the Oak Brook, IL office. Char, and over 300 other employees were laid off, but not before having to train their replacement guest workers.


Within 2 weeks of closing our office in Oak Brook IL, AT&T had begun busing in TATA contract workers on L1 visas to the closed office for training (knowledge transfer). 2 CWA local presidents Steve Tsiza of 4250 and Dan Danaher of 4998 both went to the national CWA with complaints. It went nowhere! Steve Tsiza, a member of the AFL/CIO of Illinois brought the issue there too. The outcome - ILLINOIS's AFL-CIO made a public stance toward opposition to the H1B visa program.

We had a special meeting with Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois. He promised to our faces he would get to the bottom of this. He did nothing. When following up with CWA in Washington DC, we were ignored.


Guest worker programs also affect college graduates. Even graduates from top colleges are not able to find jobs while local companies continue to hire guest workers. Stephanie Berry is the daughter of the Programmers Guild president, Kim Berry.

Stephanie Berry graduated from the University of Southern California with dual STEM degrees, including a M.S. in Civil Engineering, Structural Engineering. She graduated with a high GPA of 3.840. However, she has been unable to find a job, even while the Department of Labor is reserving jobs in the Civil Engineering category for H-1B guest workers. You can read her full story on the Programmers Guild website.

http://www.programmersguild.org/docs/st ... t2009.html

I wonder what the government will do to sustain itself when the majority of American workers have been replaced by illegal criminal elites.

The illegals/guest workers have learned how to get away with not paying taxes. They aren't going to pay for pay taxes later on.

PS
I am so sorry for the author of this article. This person worked hard and did all the right things but it seems our Democratic dominated government rewards criminals, racists and low- lives.

God help us!

Originally Posted by ELE

God help us!

We need to help ourselves. Civil disobedience is needed right now. I don't mean to suggest more...

Yes, God helps those that help themselves!

Organizations representing these unfortunate technical workers need to get this type of information to:

Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA)
Sentator Dick Durbin (R-IL)

who are writing legislation which would prohibit the hiring of any H1-B Visa program worker if there were a U.S. citizen qualified to fill the position! They need this information such as this to help get their completed bill through committee and passed by the Senate!

Originally Posted by Texas2step

who are writing legislation which would prohibit the hiring of any H1-B Visa program worker if there were a U.S. citizen qualified to fill the position!

Have here been any major changes in the last few weeks? My understanding is that in spite of Grassley and Durbin's intent, the H-1B program, according to the proposed legislation, still allows the H-1B program to hire H-1Bs even if Americans are available for the jobs. Their legislation would crack down on certain loopholes but still allow most H-1Bs in the country. What is needed is a complete BAN on the program itself. Other than a few celebrated surgeons or scientists, there are NO jobs that the H-1B brings in that cannot be done by Americans. The myth of the "uneducated American" is nothing more than a vicious propaganda machine meant to perpetuate low-cost wages from overseas in order to fire Americans from their jobs.

Millere wrote:

Texas2step wrote:
who are writing legislation which would prohibit the hiring of any H1-B Visa program worker if there were a U.S. citizen qualified to fill the position!


Have here been any major changes in the last few weeks? My understanding is that in spite of Grassley and Durbin's intent, the H-1B program, according to the proposed legislation, still allows the H-1B program to hire H-1Bs even if Americans are available for the jobs. Their legislation would crack down on certain loopholes but still allow most H-1Bs in the country. What is needed is a complete BAN on the program itself. Other than a few celebrated surgeons or scientists, there are NO jobs that the H-1B brings in that cannot be done by Americans. The myth of the "uneducated American" is nothing more than a vicious propaganda machine meant to perpetuate low-cost wages from overseas in order to fire Americans from their jobs.

Reply:
I stand corrected. From your many posts on the subject of the H1-B Visas program, you know much more about it--and, I'm sure, Sens. Grassley/Durbin's bill--than I.

I agree that the program simply should be abolished. Even liberal economist Milton Friedman was against H-1B Visas! It is my understanding that this program has been the primary "wrecking ball" behind both the wages and the presitige which U.S. born and trained engineers and our other highly-trained technical people used to command, and our country's historical "innovative competitive edge" in these fields of applied science.

Although this is not exactly a precise analogy,when I grew up, teachers considered themselves, and were considered by others, professionals, and their social position compensated in many ways for the fact that their economic wages did not reflect their levels of education. Now that "urban organizers" have reduced them to being "union members", they have the same low wages but without the respect for themselves and others which being professionals once gave them, and, like our native-born technical people, still are being replaced increasingly by foreign teachers at much lower pay scales despite having sold out their self-respect as professionals for the hope of higher wages.

Originally Posted by Texas2step

It is my understanding that this program has been the primary "wrecking ball"...

I have lived in Detroit long enough to see the temporary foreign labor programs, primarily the highly destructive L-1 visa, replace one productive and qualified American after another with fraudulent, arrogant "kids" who storm in with fake resumes and qualifications, ruining everything they touch.

Relax everybody, it's all part of the plan. The NWO requires balance and the lowering of the standards of living of the American middle class is the major objective necessary to obtain this balance. Be content knowing that our generation and perhaps our children and grandchildren are making the sacrifices that will achieve a global balance. Imagine how happy the less fortunate of the world are as they rise above abject poverty to a sustenance level of just getting by. You should be proud to lower yourselves to this level in the pursuit of worldwide equality.

Pay no attention to the fact that the elite super rich of the world are making no such sacrifices as it is only possible to bring this balance about by their intellectual manipulation of the world economy. In 40 or 50 years when the balance is totally achieved a Utopian existence will be fact. Humanity will will be in its natural state again, a ruling class controlling the subservient class.

The abomination of a middle class will be eradicated!

Originally Posted by millere

Originally Posted by Texas2step

who are writing legislation which would prohibit the hiring of any H1-B Visa program worker if there were a U.S. citizen qualified to fill the position!

Have here been any major changes in the last few weeks? My understanding is that in spite of Grassley and Durbin's intent, the H-1B program, according to the proposed legislation, still allows the H-1B program to hire H-1Bs even if Americans are available for the jobs. Their legislation would crack down on certain loopholes but still allow most H-1Bs in the country. What is needed is a complete BAN on the program itself. Other than a few celebrated surgeons or scientists, there are NO jobs that the H-1B brings in that cannot be done by Americans. The myth of the "uneducated American" is nothing more than a vicious propaganda machine meant to perpetuate low-cost wages from overseas in order to fire Americans from their jobs.

You're exactly right millere! When they want to defend cheap, illegal invaders they claim invaders are only taking jobs Americans will not do!

I'm working as a job developer in CA and can tell you without a doubt, there's no job an American citizen will not do. I have many clients who would gladly wash dishes, but cannot get those jobs because they do not speak spanish. It's almost hopeless to even send them on the interview. Ditto for constuction jobs as well.

The rational is the same when it comes to the rhetoric used to justify this vile, horrific H-1B program, which is destroying the American worker. The robber baron - corporate heads and corrupt government leaders simply modify the rheotoric ever so slightly to say H-1B workers are taking jobs that American workers cannot do!

Instead of will not do, it's reduced to cannot do when defending the H-1B program ! BOTH are lies and both are destrying this country!