How many displacements will tech workers face, before Dems are willing to take action?
How many "Want Ads for H-1B only" will tech workers read, before Dems restore EEO?The answer is not "blowing in the wind" -- it's in re-writing laws! Democrats need to put their Big Boy Pants on and stop this legal displacement and explicit discrimination. Pass Durbin's H-1B and L-1 Reform Bill. More US workers will be bumped out of their jobs and into the unemployment line as the 2009 economy continues in the same pattern of unmitigated free fall that was established last year. Motorola announced its most recent series of planned layoffs Saturday. With today's apocalyptic economy, a constant stream of massive layoffs from blue-chip companies, bypass of local talent, and continued H-1B outsourcing of the jobs that remain in the US, the answer also lies in Kossacks taking up this issue.
Self-serving CEO's who lead tech companies are refusing to hire American workers. Here's another ."H-1b Want Ad" that's not more than 10 miles from Motorola's corporate headquarters. Just like the old days, this employer has every right to only consider H-1B visa holders or citizens from abroad. It's the law.
Unlike other industries, layoffs in the tech industry are nothing new. This news report from August of 2007 covers layoffs at Sun and their subsequent lobbying to expand their legal right to discriminate against these workers:
Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post, captures our struggle: we're still fight the Civil War. Tech companies are aligned with non-union employers that have been struggling for dominance in the US job market, re-asserting a low-wage, low-benefits system. Legal discrimination is the crucial weapon that tech employers can wield in the high-wage, benefits-laden North.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Lesson Two: In matters economic, the Civil War isn't really over.
If Abraham Lincoln were still among the living as he prepared to turn 200 six weeks from now, he might detect in the congressional war over the automaker bailouts a strong echo of the war that defined his presidency. Now as then, the conflict centered on the rival labor systems of North and South. Now as then, the Southerners championed a low-wage, low-benefits system while the North favored a more generous one. And now as then, what sparked the conflict was the North's fear of the Southern system becoming the national norm. Or, as Lincoln put it, a house divided against itself cannot stand.
The US needs to learn from Europe and defeat the low-wage, temp job strategy once and for all. We can take a step up the evolutionary scale and overturn explicit discrimination that no other advanced industrialized society will tolerate, or we can continue to backslide toward the level of a third world country.
Could it be that the Democrats in the US are refusing to take the next step in our country's social evolution? They appear to want to cling to the US's roots in exploitive labor practices, and refuse to come out of the Dark Ages when it comes to employment law.
Which answer will Kossacks choose?
Not to decide is to decide. Choose life. Choose freedom. Choose to oppose and end the tyranny of legal employer discrimination.
End bypass. Enforce EEO for all.