Intel corporation is laying people off. That’s right, while Craig Barrett, Intel CEO, writes in the Washington Post yet another propaganda piece trying to scare Americans by claiming if the United States does not import massive cheap labor, we will fail economically, Intel is busy thrashing their workforce.
No one pointed out that Intel has been in the midst of some major downsizing. From Intel’s Form 10-K annual report, at the end of Dec 31, 2005 they had 99,900 employees. By Dec 2006 they had 94,100 and now according to Barrett it has 86,000.
The downsizing was announced sometime last year and the plan is to cut 10,000 workers.
Barrett has some chutzpah talking about shortages, but then the global wage arbitrage agenda to ultimately repress wages so workers are glorified consumer slaves knows no bounds.
The Washington Post, where the wife of Bill Gates sits on the board, buried a factual retort from John Miano via a Letter to the editor:
The Blue Card that Mr. Barrett said would mean that the “next Silicon Valley will not be in the United States” does not even exist. It is just a proposal by the E.U. bureaucracy. Because this proposal would require the approval of all E.U. members, it is unlikely ever to become reality.
Mr. Barrett went on to assert that E.U. leaders recognize that foreign graduates can “reinvigorate European industry.” In reality, there is widespread, high-level opposition to the proposal. At a December meeting to discuss the idea, Germany’s employment minister said there is no need for it. Leaders from Britain, the Czech Republic, Austria and the Netherlands have been among those to criticize it
Has anyone noticed the twin deficits of trade and budget and the tanking dollar? These are the scary things that are ultimately destroying the United States. Corporate short term gain driven policies, wage arbitrage are clearly having a very negative impact to the U.S. national economic interests. Wage arbitrage, i.e. labor arbitrage, is manipulating the globe’s relative economies and moving jobs, workers, industries to where the slaves of the world are paid least.
For more background on the mythical EU blue card, Matloff has a detailed analysis.
Next up in the great propaganda campaign, we have someone who is really a corporate lobbyist, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, twisting Department of Labor credentials, writing in the NY Sun some bold faced lies.
Foreign workers must be awarded labor certification from the Labor Department. This process requires the prospective employer to affirm that he has determined that no American workers are available to fill the position.
These are brazen lies folks, employers DO NOT HAVE TO CONSIDER an US worker before importing a cheap labor H-1B Visa holder! A supposed former economist for the Department of Labor knows this.
Next up she magically defies the laws of economics:
She claims the economic laws of supply and demand magically invert:
Most economic studies show that in the long run, immigrants don’t lower American’s wages, they raise them
and yet another falsehood:
Another way to increase scientific competitiveness without spending federal dollars is to increase immigration of high-skill workers…Doubling the number of H-1B visas would be costless and would result in an infusion of extraordinary talent….Increasing the minimum wage to $7.25 would reduce workforce flexibility by pricing low-skilled workers out of the job market and onto the unemployment rolls
Just a refresher, the Godfather of Economics, Paul Samuelson (1964) wrote:
After World War I, laws were passed severely limiting immigration. Only a trickle of immigrants has been admitted since then . . . By keeping labor supply down, immigration policy tends to keep wages high
Samuelson also said:
If you don’t believe that globalization changes the average wages in America, you believe in the Tooth Fairy!
Harvard economist Borjas points out the fundamental realities of labor economics:
Immigration is not evenly balanced across groups of workers who have the same education but differ in their work experience, and the nature of the supply imbalance changes over time. This paper develops a new approach for estimating the labor market impact of immigration by exploiting this variation in supply shifts across education-experience groups. I assume that similarly educated workers with different levels of experience participate in a national labor market and are not perfect substitutes. The analysis indicates that immigration lowers the wage of competing workers: a 10 percent increase in supply reduces wages by 3 to 4 percent.
All one needs to do is look at Labor Economics 101 or the many studies on wages to see that we have a clear cut corporate propaganda campaign for massive insourcing underway via the mainstream press.
Considering the Bush administration, which has been hell bent on destroying any worker advocacy or protections, this Orwellian double speak might be just on par. Furchtgott-Roth did get a mention in the book 101 People Who are REALLY Screwing America.
Now onto a huge problem, the revolving door of corporate lobbyists running our government. Here are some watchdog groups for your own research. Watch out, the lists are so long these groups have to maintain large databases to keep track of all of the corruption.
Public Citizen on lobbyists.
Open Secrets database on the revolving door between government positions and lobbyists.
Source Watch on some of the more brazen industry placement of special interest representatives inside our Government.
Go here to read another op-ed about Craig Barrett’s scaremongering called: The Blue Card Scare
If American businesses lose their lead in technology then it is their own fault.
They are the ones that outsourced so much work to countries that will eventually produce businesses that will be their competitors. In the process of outsourcing they have transferred their technology and knowledge to these new competitors.
It is these multi-national companies that have imported so many foreign workers and outsourced so much work that have provided the DISincentives for Americans to choose these careers.
It is these businesses that have LAID OFF and FIRED so many skilled and highly educated Americans that were forced to leave the workforce.
Had these businesses INVESTED in these Americans instead of firing them to cut short-term costs then there would be a much larger pool of skilled Americans to choose from.
So, if American businesses lose their lead in technology then it is their own fault and they shouldn’t go whining to Congress for subsidies and bailouts.
You are bringing to light something I sure would like to see more emphasis on. I think there is a larger profit in not thrashing one’s workforce and wage arbitrage, especially in the innovation areas such as STEM.
You are so right. There are almost no candidates even discussing this because they are all such slaves to corporate interests. I’ve seen entire floors of people in the office building of a giant IT company eliminated, but not before they had to train their replacements from India.
I’ve worked at two large U.S. corporations where I created thousands of UNIX accounts for employees and nearly all of them were in India. I’m 100% sure that the amount of off shoring that is really done is grossly under reported. The requests for new employees would frequently come in as being for someone in Pittsburgh, India or Kolkata, Pennsylvania.
I’ve seen gross security violations in relation to off shoring, too. Financial software server administrators in India working for a major U.S. IT company would use the same password for all the servers and never change it.
The FBI had to audit one large U.S. company I worked for and they required that all the account administrators had to be U.S. citizens because this company was strongly related to U.S. national security interests and yet 3rd level UNIX administrators in India were given the highest level access to all the company’s servers.