ORLANDO, Fla. — The employees who kept the data systems humming in the vast Walt Disney fantasy fief did not suspect trouble when they were suddenly summoned to meetings with their boss.
While
families rode the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and searched for Nemo on
clamobiles in the theme parks, these workers monitored computers in
industrial buildings nearby, making sure millions of Walt Disney World
ticket sales, store purchases and hotel reservations went through
without a hitch. Some were performing so well that they thought they had
been called in for bonuses.
Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October
that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to
immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who
were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next
three months, some Disney employees were required to train their
replacements to do the jobs they had lost.
“I
just couldn’t believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and
take over our jobs exactly,” said one former worker, an American in his
40s who remains unemployed since his last day at Disney on Jan. 30. “It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your job. I still can’t grasp it.”
Disney
executives said that the layoffs were part of a reorganization, and
that the company opened more positions than it eliminated.
But
the layoffs at Disney and at other companies, including the Southern
California Edison power utility, are raising new questions about how
businesses and outsourcing companies are using the temporary visas,
known as H-1B, to place immigrants in technology jobs in the United
States. These visas are at the center of a fierce debate in Congress
over whether they complement American workers or displace them.
According
to federal guidelines, the visas are intended for foreigners with
advanced science or computer skills to fill discrete positions when
American workers with those skills cannot be found. Their use, the
guidelines say, should not “adversely affect the wages and working
conditions” of Americans. Because of legal loopholes, however, in
practice, companies do not have to recruit American workers first or
guarantee that Americans will not be displaced.
Too
often, critics say, the visas are being used to bring in immigrants to
do the work of Americans for less money, with laid-off American workers
having to train their replacements.
“The
program has created a highly lucrative business model of bringing in
cheaper H-1B workers to substitute for Americans,” said Ronil Hira, a
professor of public policy at Howard University who studies visa
programs and has testified before Congress about H-1B visas.
A
limited number of the visas, 85,000, are granted each year, and they
are in high demand. Technology giants like Microsoft, Facebook and
Google repeatedly press for increases in the annual quotas, saying there
are not enough Americans with the skills they need.
Many
American companies use H-1B visas to bring in small numbers of
foreigners for openings demanding specialized skills, according to
official reports. But for years, most top recipients of the visas have
been outsourcing or consulting firms based in India, or their American
subsidiaries, which import workers for large contracts to take over
entire in-house technology units — and to cut costs.
The immigrants are
employees of the outsourcing companies.
In
2013, those firms — including Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and
HCL America, the company hired by Disney — were six of the top 10
companies granted H-1Bs, with each one receiving more than 1,000 visas.
H-1B
immigrants work for less than American tech workers, Professor Hira
said at a hearing in March of the Senate Judiciary Committee, because of
weaknesses in wage regulations. The savings have been 25 percent to 49
percent in recent cases, he told lawmakers.
In
a letter in April to top federal authorities in charge of immigration, a
bipartisan group of senators called for an investigation of recent
“H-1B-driven layoffs,” saying, “Their frequency seems to have increased
dramatically in the past year alone.”
Last
year, Southern California Edison began 540 technology layoffs while
hiring two Indian outsourcing firms for much of the work. Three
Americans who had lost jobs told Senate lawmakers that many of those
being laid off had to teach immigrants to perform their functions.
In
Orlando, Disney executives said the reorganization resulting in the
layoffs was meant to allow technology operations to focus on producing
more innovations. They said that over all, the company had a net gain of
70 tech jobs.
“Disney
has created almost 30,000 new jobs in the U.S. over the past decade,”
said Kim Prunty, a Disney spokeswoman, adding that the company expected
its contractors to comply with all immigration laws.
The
tech workers laid off were a tiny fraction of Disney’s “cast members,”
as the entertainment conglomerate calls its theme park workers, who
number 74,000 in the Orlando area. Employees who lost jobs were allowed a
three-month transition with résumé coaching to help them seek other
positions in the company, Disney executives said. Of those laid off, 120
took new jobs at Disney, and about 40 retired or left the company
before the end of the transition period, while about 90 did not find new
Disney jobs, executives said.
Living
in a company town, former Disney workers were reluctant to be
identified, saying they feared they could jeopardize their chances of
finding new jobs with the few other local tech employers. Several
workers agreed to interviews, but only on the condition of anonymity.
They
said only a handful of those laid off were moved directly by Disney to
other company jobs. The rest were left to compete for positions through
Disney job websites. Despite the company’s figures, few people they knew
had been hired, they said, and then often at a lower pay level. No one
was offered retraining, they said. One former worker, a 57-year-old man
with more than 10 years at Disney, displayed a list of 18 jobs in the
company he had applied for. He had not had more than an initial
conversation on any one, he said.
Disney
“made the difficult decision to eliminate certain positions, including
yours,” as a result of “the transition of your work to a managed service
provider,” said a contract presented to employees on the day the
layoffs were announced. It offered a “stay bonus” of 10 percent of
severance pay if they remained for 90 days. But the bonus was contingent
on “the continued satisfactory performance of your job duties.” For
many, that involved training a replacement. Young immigrants from India
took the seats at their computer stations.
“The
first 30 days was all capturing what I did,” said the American in his
40s, who worked 10 years at Disney. “The next 30 days, they worked side
by side with me, and the last 30 days, they took over my job
completely.” To receive his severance bonus, he said, “I had to make
sure they were doing my job correctly.”
In
late November, this former employee received his annual performance
review, which he provided
to The New York Times. His supervisor, who was
not aware the man was scheduled for layoff, wrote that because of his
superior skills and “outstanding” work, he had saved the company
thousands of dollars. The supervisor added that he was looking forward
to another highly productive year of having the employee on the team.
The employee got a raise. His severance pay had to be recalculated to include it.
The
former Disney employee who is 57 worked in project management and
software development.
His résumé lists a top-level skill certification
and command of seven operating systems, 15 program languages and more
than two dozen other applications and media.
“I
was forced into early retirement,” he said. The timing was “horrible,”
he said, because his wife recently had a medical emergency with
expensive bills. Shut out of Disney, he is looking for a new job
elsewhere.
Former
employees said many immigrants who arrived were younger technicians
with limited data skills who did not speak English fluently and had to
be instructed in the basics of the work.
HCL
America, a branch of a global company based in Noida, India, won a
contract with Disney in 2012. In a statement, the company said details
of the agreement were confidential. “As a company, we work very closely
with the U.S. Department of Labor and strictly adhere to all visa
guidelines and requirements to be complied with,” it said.
The
chairman of the Walt Disney Company, Robert A. Iger, is a co-chairman
with Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, and Rupert
Murdoch, the executive chairman of News Corporation, in the Partnership for a New American Economy, which pushes for an overhaul of immigration laws, including an increase in H-1B visas.
But
Disney directly employs fewer than 10 H-1B workers, executives said,
and has not been prominent in visa lobbying. Mr. Iger supports the
partnership’s broader goals, including increased border security and a
pathway to legal status for immigrants here illegally, officials of the
organization said.
No comments:
Post a Comment