Train your replacment

Wall Street Journal Blogs
Infosys Employee Testifies on Alleged Visa Fraud
By Megha Bahree and Miriam Jordan
July 28, 2011, 10:48 AM IST

In a statement to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security on Tuesday, Jay Palmer, the whistleblower at Infosys, said the company “intentionally violated our visa and tax laws for the purpose of increasing revenues.” Mr. Palmer accused Infosys of frequently violating U.S. visa laws and of staffing multiple client projects with illegal employees, including at Goldman Sachs, American Express, Wal-Mart and Johnson Control, among others.

Mr. Palmer filed a lawsuit against the company in February in Circuit Court in Alabama, alleging the company sought his help to circumvent U.S. law. The lawsuit has led to a probe by U.S. authorities.

Business Line
Infy visa case: Petitioner wants to prove he is right

Balaji Narasimhan
Bangalore, Nov. 12

In July, he [Palmer] said, “Infosys also decided to flood the consulate with applications in order to get as many approved as possible no matter the level of an individual's skill. This was totally about profit and not hiring Americans for jobs in the US due to higher salary requirements."

Updates Palmer vs Infosys:
Infosys’ H-1B visa misuse: US court denies arbitration in Palmer case

FP Staff Nov 10, 2011

In a major setback to IT bellwether Infosys, a US court has denied arbitration in the visa case filed by employee Jack Palmer against the software major.

Visa misuse: Infosys in trouble, again
Sep 7, 2011 0 Comments

After two earlier complaints of visa misuse, a third whistleblower complaint has been filed against the software giant for non-compliance of form I-9.

Palmer’s lawsuit against Infosys gets teeth as allegations snowball
Sep 9, 2011 14 Comments

All three whistle-blowers, including Palmer have said Infosys misused short-term B1 visitors’ visas to bring in low-cost engineers from India. If Infosys was hoping to settle with Palmer out of court the odds aren’t looking too good for Infosys.

ConputerWorld
Fired IT workers file lawsuit claiming H-1B workers replaced them

Workers file suit against Molina Healthcare and its outsourcer, Cognizant
By Patrick Thibodeau
July 12, 2011 03:53 PM ET

Eighteen IT workers in California have filed a lawsuit against their former employer claiming they were replaced by H-1B workers from India and then laid off in violation of the state's anti-discrimination laws.


In the lawsuit, the 18 workers say that IT managers at Molina Healthcare Inc. increasingly catered to the Indian workers while leaving U.S. workers, mostly security analysts and programmers who earned at least $75,000 a year, feeling excluded prior getting laid off last year.

SFGate
BofA: Train your replacement, or no severance pay for you
June 09, 2006
David Lazarus

"If people want their severance packages, they have to train their replacements," a senior engineer at one of BofA's Bay Area facilities told me. "There's nothing in writing that says this -- the bank's been careful about that. But it's made clear at meetings what we're supposed to do."
 

Shirley Norton, a BofA spokeswoman, confirmed that while workers aren't being explicitly told they have to train their replacements or risk losing severance pay, they are being instructed that severance pay is contingent on satisfactorily completing their jobs.


Completing their jobs, in turn, can include training replacements from India, she said.

San Francisco Business Times
Bank job: You're fired, now go train your replacement
Date: Sunday, November 24, 2002, 9:00pm PST

Sure enough, dozens of Indian tech workers have been visiting BofA's major tech centers in Concord, Jacksonville, Fla., and other cities around the country recently. They're getting training on work they'll do back at home for about half what departing employees are paid. The bank confirms that some laid-off workers are being required to help train new ones (and not speak to the media) as a condition of receiving severance.


The fact that BofA is simultaneously cutting jobs here, outsourcing similar work and requiring old job-holders to train new ones shouldn't lead anyone to assume these moves are in any way related, a spokeswoman insisted.

"Our sourcing strategy and these job cuts in response to economic conditions are completely separate," said BofA spokeswoman Juliet Don in San Francisco.

BusinessWeek
IBMers Training their Replacements?
Posted by: Steve Hamm on March 10

Why not just take the pink slip and tell your boss to shove it? How widespread is this practice of forcing people to train their replacements? How does it work? Do other companies do similar things?

Pleasanton Weekly
Tri-Valley University brought students and spouses into U.S.
Times of India cites ministry report
by Glenn Wohltmann

Tri-Valley University not only brought students over to Pleasanton on illegal visas, but many of those students brought their spouses here as well, according to The Times of India.

The paper cites an Indian ministry report that says a number of immigrants got their spouses admitted at Tri-Valley, which helped them get an extended stay of up to eight years with illegal student work permits, or brought them into the United States through dependent H-4 visas, the report says.

Once in, some secured admission in accredited universities and got F-1 student visas. Later, many shifted to Tri-Valley, according to the report cited by The Times, which said the university gave them the opportunity to work from day one, although Tri-Valley was not authorized to do so.

Department of Justice
THURSDAY, MAY 1, 2008
iGate Mastech Inc. to Pay $45,000 in Civil Penalties to Settle Discrimination Claim

WASHINGTON - The Department of Justice today announced that iGate Mastech Inc. (iGate), a Pittsburgh computer consulting company, has agreed to pay $45,000 in civil penalties to settle allegations that iGate discriminated against United States citizens in its employment practices. The settlement also requires iGate to train its recruitment personnel and to post a nondiscrimination statement on its Web site.

The settlement stems from the Department’s finding that, between May 9, 2006, and June 4, 2006, iGate placed 30 job announcements for computer programmers that expressly favored H-1B visa holders to the exclusion of U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and other legal U.S. workers. Such preference constituted citizenship status discrimination and is prohibited by the Immigration and Nationality Act.

State Unemployment Insurance Subsidizing H-1B Guestworker Program?

After watching, "Cohen & Grigsby's, Seventh Annual Immigration Law Update - Hot Topics in Immigration Law" -- a video presentation, which has enlightened us, as to how immigration attorneys feel about employment protections. (See InformationWeek Article) I realized that the H-1B industry is very sensitive to specific dates. In particular, April 1st, is the application date for new H-1B petitions, on October 1st, the approved H-1B candidates are granted admission into the United States to begin working.

The H-1B October 1st, employment commencement date, makes Fiscal Qtr1 (Oct. - Dec.) the most important time of the year for H-1B employers.

• The H-1B must be acclimated, a proficient knowledge-transfer in a technical field will run about 90 days.
• The domestic employee must be released before January 1st, to comply with Department of Labor 90 day severance rule when applying for new H-1B visas.

H-1B dependent employers and willful violator employers must attest to the following... "The employer will not displace any similarly employed U.S. worker within 90 days before or after applying for H-1B status, or an extension of status for any H-1B worker" http://www.dol.gov/compliance/guide/h1b.htm

Following this logic, Joe Sixpack, the Java slinging guru, is tasked with training his replacement on October 1, and is terminated effective December 31 (91 days before the April 1st.) Joe Sixpack was employed for Fiscal Qtr1, in its entirety. Therefore, Joe’s unemployment begins on the first day of the Fiscal Qtr2 (Jan. – Mar.)

In the following chart(s), I’ve downloaded BLS "Mass Layoff" data for the NAICS group, "Professional and technical services." Charts 1 - 4, are different views of the 1997 - 2006, mass layoff quarterly data.

This is as far as the BLS interface would allow me to "drill down" into Extended Mass Layoff data. I’ve posted the NAICS sub-codes to display that this category is the most vulnerable to H-1B replacement/displacement workers. (see Footnote 1)

Chart1 (click image to enlarge)

In Chart 1, we see a dramatic increase in Qtr2 yearly Layoff events for "Professional and Technical services." If we ignore the years 2001-2003, we observe a trend shift in persons involved in mass layoffs in Fiscal Quarter 2. Instead of returning to the pre-recession ratios, the Qtr2 layoffs persist. (If the 2001 recession ended in 2003-- layoffs should have normalized in 2004.)


Chart 2 (click image to enlarge)


Chart 2, groups fiscal quarters by year. Qtr2 layoffs remain stubbornly elevated, while other quarterly layoffs have returned to levels commensurate to pre 2001-2002 recession levels.

Chart 3 (click image to enlarge)

In theory, layoff events should be equally distributed throughout the year, 25% per Fiscal Quarter. The Qtr2 layoff data indicates that the layoff ratios were behaving normally, even through the 2001 recession, Qtr2 layoffs began to spike in Fiscal year 2002. (The disturbance in 2000 - 2001 (Qtr1 & Qtr4) may be the related to the climax of theY2K buildup and emergency rebuilding of infrastructure after 9/11.)

Chart 4 (click image to enlarge)

If the case that elevated fiscal Qtr2 layoffs events are expected in business practice, isolating the Qtr2 data provokes more thought.

Chart4 Graph-points = Qtr2 - ((Qtr + Qtr3 +Qtr4)/3))

The current departure from the pre-2001 recession data is notable:

Avg. additional Qtr2 layoffs 1997 - 2000 = 12,167
Avg. additional Qtr2 layoffs 2001 - 2006 = 26,566

If I’ve done my math correctly, current Qtr2 (2001- 2006) layoffs are 235% of pre 2001 levels, or an additional 16,388 layoffs per year, above the 1997 - 2000 avg.

Just for conjecture let’s imagine that these 16,388 layoffs are the direct result of worker displacement, we can then determine how much money the State Unemployment Insurance programs and their re-insurers may be subsidizing the H-1B and other guestworker programs yearly.

The BLS report, Series Id: LEU0252881500, tells us that the median wage (second quartile) in the U.S. averaged $671.00 per week in 2006. Generally, unemployment benefits are 40% of the worker's previous weekly earnings, which would be $268.40 per week.

Estimated Impact to Unemployment Insurance programs and re-insurers:

• $4,398,777.78 per week

(Assume displaced American workers exhaust 26 weeks U.I.)

• $114,368,222.22 per year
  

Footnote 1:

http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?&series_id=MLUQS00NN0035003
Series Id: MLUQS00NN0035003 (1)Data Element: Layoff eventsIndustry/Reason/Characteristic: Professional and technical servicesData Series: Extended Mass LayoffsState/Region/Division: United States
NAICS 541000 - Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services consists of:
NAICS 541100 - Legal Services
NAICS 541200 - Accounting, Tax Preparation, Bookkeeping, and Payroll Services
NAICS 541300 - Architectural, Engineering, and Related Services
NAICS 541400 - Specialized Design Services
NAICS 541500 - Computer Systems Design and Related Services
NAICS 541600 - Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services
NAICS 541700 - Scientific Research and Development Services
NAICS 541800 - Advertising and Related Services
NAICS 541900 - Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

Data available on request: netmenders2000@yahoo.com