As new H-1B season begins, Microsoft renews call to loosen rules on foreign workers
This story is posted here by permission of Todd Bishop. Please follow the link for the entire article on GeekWire.com
It’s the start of an annual tradition, and the revival of a perennial debate.
Today is the first day for companies to submit petitions to employ highly skilled foreign workers in the U.S. under H-1B visas in 2013 — a program used by many U.S. tech companies to allow engineers from China, India and other countries to work here.
The program has raised objections over the years from labor groups and others who contend that people on H-1B visas are taking jobs from U.S. workers.
However, Microsoft and other companies that use the program contend that it helps the economy in the long run to bring these workers to the U.S. They say the current restrictions on the program are too severe.
Please follow this link for the entire article on GeekWire.com
Harvest America or Invest in America
By Stan Sorcher
Many American voters seem ready to run our country as if it were a business.
Some businesses take a long-range growth perspective, and honor all their stakeholders. A country run that way would be OK.
However, other businesses believe their markets are "unattractive," to use the business school expression. If your business is in an unattractive market, your smart business move is to defer investment in new plant and equipment, cut back on worker training, freeze or terminate pensions, reduce R&D, extract as much value from the business as possible, return the cash to shareholders, and dump whatever remains. I wouldn't run a country that way.
Jim McDermott supports the US Call Center Bill
With American families struggling, it's time for companies to bring good jobs home. Foreign call centers not only ship jobs abroad, but they endanger our confidential personal information because they operate without US data regulation. Les French (President CWA Local 37083, left), Stan Wylie (President CWA Local 7800, second from right) and Ted Frederick (President CWA Local 7818, right) met with Congressman Jim McDermott (D WA-7) and asked that he co-sponsor H.R.3596 - United States Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act. Which he did immediately!You can ask lawmakers to support the US Call Center Bill. The Bill would build jobs in America by:
CWA to NLRB: Verizon Wireless Subverted Union ElectionThis story has been re-published from the CWA site. Click here to read more and send a message of support.
Jan 19, 2012 CWA has asked the National Labor Relations Board to throw out a narrow Jan. 6 union election loss for 13 workers at a Verizon Wireless facility in Bloomington, Ill., charging that the company repeatedly violated the law to ensure the vote would go its way. Widespread support existed for a union last November when the retail sales workers and customer service representatives contacted CWA to assist them in organizing. When workers petitioned for an election, 76 percent supported the union. By the time the election was held two months later, the vote was 7-6 against the union, a result of the company's illegal tactics.
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Obama’s high-tech labor liesThis article re-printed from Salon.We have no shortage of skilled engineers. Corporations would just rather import foreign ones on lower wagesBy David Sirota A few days after the New York Times’ (embarrassingly belated and deeply flawed) article on Apple’s Chinese production facilities reignited a national discussion about offshore outsourcing, President Obama was confronted during a Google+ “hang out” about why during a brutal unemployment crisis his administration continues to support expanding the H-1B visa program that allows tech companies to annually import thousands of low-wage engineers from abroad. In his stunning answer, the president first expresses bewilderment that any American high-tech engineer could be out of work, because he says that “what industry tells me is that they don’t have enough (domestic) highly skilled engineers” and that “the word that we’re getting is that somebody (a domestic engineer) in a high-tech field should be able to find something right away.” He then goes on to insist that the H-1B program is “reserved only for those companies who say they cannot find somebody in (a) particular field” and that it shouldn’t apply to industries where “there are a lot of highly skilled American workers” looking for a job because he says his administration is focused on “encourag(ing) more American engineers to be placed” in open positions.
CATERPILLAR THREATENS CANADIAN WORKERSWith cheaper U.S. Labor Did we make it to the bottom? Well, we must be close. Would we like to have those jobs? Hell, yes! But I get a belly ache when I realize that they (the capitalists) are playing us against our brothers and sisters in Canada. We’re being used in the same way they played the cheaper labor game to move jobs out of the U.S. The best way to cow a population is starvation. Take away the work for a few years and let desperation set in. Then, when we’re not so high and mighty, they trust that we’d turn our backs on our fellow workers and be grateful. They’re treating us like dogs fighting for scraps under the table. This is an insult to Canadian and U.S. labor, as well as world labor. It’s an old game that we should fight against, and it won’t stop until it doesn’t work for them anymore. It’s well known that corporations don’t have national pride, in any country or its people. Boeing recently settled an NLRB lawsuit regarding allegations that the aircraft maker illegally shifted work from union plants in Washington state to a new non-union factory in South Carolina. It’s the same game played with citizen against citizen. We can only defeat these practices by organizing. “When the baby’s sleeping, everything is OK. But, when the baby cries…” –Randi Rhodes. People all over America are waking up to realize the dirty tricks that have been played against them. We can’t let corporate power use our desperation to drive a wedge between us, our Canadian counterparts or any of our brothers and sisters in the rest of the world. Together we win, Solidarity. |
Close enough that U.S. industrial giant Caterpillar has 
