U.S. Government DOL tries to get cheap labor, $4400 a year!
This is an unreal catch, posted on slashdot.
It seems the Department of Labor, yes you read that right, our labor department, is trying to get some cheap labor in India to development a U.S. government website...a site to help Americans unemployed no less!
To power the Tools for America's Job Seekers Challenge, the US Department of Labor tapped IdeaScale, a subsidiary of Survey Analytics, which is headquartered in Seattle with satellite offices in Nasik, India and Auckland, NZ.
According to the Federal Register, an Emergency OMB Review was requested to launch the joint initiative of the DOL, White House, and IdeaScale to help out unemployed US workers.
A cached Monster.com ad seeks candidates to work on the development and maintenance of ideascale.com, but in India at an annual salary of Rs. 200,000 to 300,000 ($4,4000 to $6,600 US).
With friends like this, who needs enemies?
Stop with the losing attitude
The DOL's Hilda Solis came out with some words supporting S. 887 (the H1B and L1 reform act). Obama also said some things about helping Americans into IT jobs. This was a huge break from the past, because most Democrats have generally supported H1B and even offshoring. The leadership changing course could change them. (The Republicans are already split on the issue.)
Democrats (some of them) argued for a "buy American" clause in the stimulus bill. GOP opposed that. So, they see giving preference to local business as part of their party agenda right now.
It would be a good idea to write a letter to the DOL about this offshoring by one of their vendors. The DOL was dealing with a US-based company, and was probably unaware of the offshoring (and the lowballing of the wages).
What people should do is write letters, send copies to papers, and shame the government into pressuring their vendors to hire local talent.
In fact, that's now on my to-do list.
letters every day, either snail mail or FAX
But it is volume that makes a difference and it has to be "snow" to get their attention. Fairly amazing but lobbyists are all over this and have been for many years. The Obama administration also has a notorious group on the economic team who promote offshore outsourcing, in particular tech jobs.
Hilda Solis U.S. Department
Hilda Solis
U.S. Department of Labor
200 Constitution Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20210
I know the Obama team has a bunch of neoliberals on it. He's pro-business like the rest of them. On the other hand, he's also got a political base that would oppose H1B abuse: working class people, who enter the middle class through tech jobs.
The tech lobby goes after both Republicans and Democrats, and the tech workers need to do the same.
Also, I know a lot of people against H1B are also against Indians and Chinese, but, ultimately, we do the same work, and need to build that bridge too. We're hurt the most when they're exploited the worst. Prevent their super-exploitation, and we help ourselves.
PS - don't underestimate the power of a strong argument. These bureaucrats are also politicians. They follow trends, but, also want to influence them as well.
EPA hires IT Government Contractors, who then hire 50% H1B visas
When I worked for a large government contractor, who had a contract with the EPA, half of the IT department was employed by H1B visas from China and India.
People may not believe it but many times I would go to the cafeteria and there would be 10 people there speaking Chinese or Hindi. I was one of the few English speaking employees.
Of course we were offsite and I guess that helps the government hide the fact.
I think it's very important to expose government contracts
as committing labor arbitrage. They try to claim this is savings but that just isn't so. This is U.S. taxpayer dollars and many of these contracts fail, produce nothing, never mind diisplace U.S. workers. They are poorly executed or not, with no rsults.
So, this entire "savings" argument is not valid, especially when using taxpayer money because that should be recycled inside our national economy.
There are also larger issues
There are also larger issues - like how do we convince kids to pursue the STEM jobs? They pay less than banking, and they are a lot harder than other jobs, yet are critical to the economy. The countries that innovate are the ones that thrive economically.