Lowes Home Improvement is the Latest US Corporation to Redistribute Income From the 99 to the 1 Percent Via the H1-B Program

Supporters of the H1-B Visa program continuously tell us of the need for it because of a severe shortage of high-tech employees in the United States. This, of course, is not and has never been true. The program has been used by US corporations to lower the wages and benefits they pay to their employees by switching out US workers for foreign labor. That’s it in a nutshell.

Lowes Home Improvement provides us with the latest example of how the visa scam works. On June 7, 2017, the Charlotte Observer reported that Lowes was laying off 125 of its US high-tech workers, and is sending those jobs to Bangalore India. That means we have another 125 skilled and experienced US high-tech workers to fill jobs anyplace in the states. See Lowes Lays of High-Tech Workers–Charlotte Observer

Actually, the US has hundreds of thousands of highly skilled US high-tech workers who cannot find jobs because corporations have outsourced hundreds of thousands of high-tech jobs using H1-B visa workers, or simply brought in hundreds of thousands of H1-B workers. That’s because US companies can bring in 85,000 foreign workers every year under the subterfuge of the H1-B visa.

“Bangalore has been described as the “Silicon Valley of India.” Other major corporations have a growing presence in the IT hub, including Oracle, Dell, IBM and GE, according to a recent Wired story. Another is Wipro, an outsourcing firm used by Observer parent McClatchy,” according to the Observer.

US high-tech workers have experienced numerous layoffs over the last several years because their jobs were exported, or taken by H1-B Visa workers. Some of the employers exporting high-tech jobs include Disney, Intel, Nike, Oracle, Microsoft, Google, Dell, IBM, General Electric, the University of California at San Francisco, Eversource Energy, Abbott Laboratories, PG and E, and many more. That’s thousands of US high-tech workers who have been replaced. Where is this shortage of US high-tech workers? It isn’t in the USA.

The typical American high-tech worker earns considerably more than foreign H1-B workers. According to the New York Times, US businesses only need to pay the minimum of $60,000 a year to its H1-B workers, and they often don’t get any sort of benefits package.

The H1-B visa scam works like this. A US company will hire H1-B Visa folks through a third party. Then American high-tech workers will train their H1-B replacements. Then the H1-B visa worker will either stay in the US or work in say, India, meaning the job has been exported via the H1-B program. The H1-B Visa is only good for three years, so if US jobs are exported using H1-B workers, after three years, the job is no longer governed by H1-B Visa rules. Then the foreign employee can work for quite a bit less than the $60,000 minimum in India or wherever.

The difference in pay and other compensation between the higher compensated US workers and the lower paid foreign and H1-B visa workers is redistributed to the super rich via higher corporate earnings, rising share prices, and surging dividends. The H1-B visa is an income transfer scam, plain and simple. It is time to eliminate this disaster for US high-tech workers.

The Trump Administration claims it is preparing to propose changes to the system that will benefit US workers over Wall Street investors, but we will see.

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Boycott Toys R Us: The Company is Exporting US Accounting Jobs to India

The New York Times recently reported that Toys R Us had exported 67 jobs from its headquarters to India via the H1B visa.

According to the Times,

“A temporary visa program known as H-1B allows American employers to hire foreign professionals with college degrees and “highly specialized knowledge,” mainly in science and technology, to meet their needs for particular skills. Employers, according to the federal guidelines, must sign a declaration that the foreign workers “will not adversely affect the working conditions” of Americans or lower their wages.

In recent years, however, global outsourcing and consulting firms have obtained thousands of temporary visas to bring in foreign workers who have taken over jobs that had been held by American workers. The Labor Department has opened an investigation of possible visa violations by contractors at the Walt Disney Company and at Southern California Edison, where immigrants replaced Americans in jobs they were doing in this country. Four former workers at Disney have filed discrimination complaints against the company. The companies say they have complied with all applicable laws.”

The problem with the H1-B visa are numerous. They are primarily used to reduce American wages and salaries, for starters. In addition, there must be a shortage of US workers in order for a US corporation to bring in H1-B workers, but there never is a shortage. The Times reports, “…in recent years, many jobs that American workers lost have been in accounting and back-office administration — although there is no shortage of Americans qualified to do that kind of work.”

Then the H1-B visa worker must have “exceptional skills,” but that is rare, especially in the case of Toys R Us. Toys R Us employees trained their replacements so their jobs could be more easily exported to India.

Christine Brigagliano, a lawyer in San Francisco with extensive experience advising American companies on obtaining visas, says “Those contractors are signing on the bottom line, saying we will not undercut the wages and working conditions of Americans. But, in fact, they are.”

Of course they are! That is the purpose of the H1-B visa, and always has been.

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How Important are Trade Rules? Let’s Look to India for an Example and How Those Rules Are Written to Undermine Local and Federal Government

India has been told by the World Trade Organization that it cannot go ahead as planned with an ambitious plan for a massive expansion of its renewable energy sector, because it seeks to provide work for the Indian people. The case against India was brought by the United States.

The ruling says India’s National Solar Mission—which would create local jobs, while bringing electricity to millions of people—must be changed because it includes a domestic content clause requiring part of the solar cells to be produced in India.

Stunningly, this ruling was brought about because India and the United States signed on to the Paris agreement combating climate change last December. President Obama praised the deal, but he was swift to invoke the climate accords to stymie India’s efforts to produce jobs for its own citizens.

One official of India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy told India Climate Dialogue that the ruling might make the country’s solar plan more expensive and would definitely hit domestic manufacturing and, consequently, the possibility of creating jobs in the sector.

The government-funded program aims to generate 100 gigawatts of solar energy annually by 2022. One gigawatt is enough, for example, to supply the needs of 750,000 typical U.S. homes.

Sam Cossar-Gilbert, economic justice and resisting neoliberalism program co-ordinator at Friends of the Earth International, said the ruling “shows how arcane trade rules can be used to undermine governments that support clean energy and local jobs. The ink is barely dry on the UN Paris agreement, but clearly trade still trumps real action on climate change.”

This is a lesson for people on ways that the Trans Pacific Partnership, a massive income and political power redistribution scam falsely marketed as a trade treaty, will alter US government policy that might benefit the 99 percent in the United States. Your federal and state government’s will be challenged in a secret tribunal over any policies, including raising minimum wages and labeling GMO food content, any foreign corporation arbitrarily decides will roll back its future anticipated profits. And they can make up any numbers they want, for decades into the future.

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Exporting jobs is the fuel that causes the stock markets and corporate profits to surge at record levels, And Hillary Supports This Economic Plan

In 2012, in a town hall in India, then US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said,

“Outsourcing jobs is part of our economic relationship with India. I think there are advantages with it that have certainly benefited many parts of our country (the USA), and there are disadvantages that goes toward the need to improve the work skills of our own people (those who lose their jobs), and create a better economic environment. It’s like anything. It’s got pluses and minuses.”

What Clinton didn’t say is who benefits and who loses when she supports exporting jobs. Let’s get something straight, nearly thirty million US jobs were exported from the US from 1990 to 2010. Millions more have been exported since. Notice in the graph below how the exporting of US jobs increased with NAFTA, which Clinton supported. Hillary has also supported the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), until she came under intense criticism as a presidential candidate. No doubt, she still supports it because Wall Street does, and she is Wall Street’s candidate.

The United States is in the seventh and likely final year of an economic boom. The statistics are staggering about what exporting jobs have brought about here.

1. Income inequality perhaps never experienced in US history.
2. The 99 percent has gone from earning 92 percent of all income produced in the USA in 1980 to 63 percent today.
3. 48 million people on food stamps, which is nearly one out of six Americans.
4. A middle class that has shrunk from 61 to 49 percent of US adults from 1970 to 2016.
5. Wages that have declined in real terms for 36 years.
6. A rising homeless population.
7. Wealth inequality never experienced in US history.
8. The worst economic expansion in terms of wage growth and jobs growth since the Great Depression.
9. Slower job growth than under President Jimmy Carter, back when the population was 65 percent of today, and the Gross Domestic Product was 45 percent the size of today.
10. A tax base that is shrinking every year as the jobs are being exported, and this has brought about higher college costs, shrinking social safety nets (such as social security), decrepit public infrastructure, and many more negative things.
11. A massive trade deficit the United States has with US corporations manufacturing abroad and then exporting those products to the USA.

Obviously, exporting jobs is not a winning formula for the vast majority of US citizens, but Mrs. Clinton thinks so. The rich, of course, benefit from exporting jobs.

When jobs are exported (and let’s face it, jobs are the number export product of the United States), the difference between the old higher US wages and the new lower wages in China, Vietnam and elsewhere, go straight into the pockets of the super rich via higher corporate earnings, rising share prices, and surging dividends.

So the good things about exporting jobs that Hillary spoke about in the video are that exporting jobs is the fuel that causes the stock markets and corporate profits to surge at record levels. Clinton doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about the massive collateral damage to the 99 percent, much of which is listed above.

That’s why every geographic area of the United States outside of the old confederacy is Bernie Sanders country, and why he will win the Democratic nomination.

That why Bernie Sanders whipped Hillary Clinton badly in Kansas and Nebraska on Saturday, March 5. He won by 68 percent of the vote in Kansas, and 55 percent in Nebraska. Hillary, as expected, took 70 percent of the vote in Louisiana.

Clinton has yet to prove she can win decisively outside of the southeast. She appears to be nothing more than an over-hyped regional candidate. True, Clinton edged out Bernie in Iowa, Nevada, and Massachusetts, but outside of the South, it is Sanders who has dominated the Democratic primaries.

Not counting the super delegates, most, of which, have declared for Clinton, Hillary leads in delegates 659 to 455. However, most of the Southern states have voted in the Democratic primary (save for Florida) and the rest of the nation appears to be Sanders country.

Sure most of the super delegates temporarily support Clinton, but if she loses the popular vote in the primaries, which is highly likely, the super delegates are not bound to Clinton. They will switch to Sanders, or experience the end of the Democratic Party by sticking with Hillary.

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International trade agreements are the reason for US Manufacturing Job Loss, Not Productivity

A new study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), called Manufacturing Job Loss: Trade, Not Productivity, Is the Culprit, shows how the corporate propaganda machine has continued to lie to us. The not so free press continues to tell us that automation has cost the US jobs, and that’s the big reason why US job growth is so historically slow nowadays, and wages/benefits have gone down for the last thirty years.

As I’ve pointed out in the past, those claims are out and out lies, and the reporters and editors making these claims are liars. Check out the following links from this blog: Five Graphs that Will Make Your Blood Boiland JOBS: The Largest US Export Product.

According to the EPI study, “The United States lost 5 million manufacturing jobs between January 2000 and December 2014. There is a widespread misperception that rapid productivity growth is the primary cause of continuing manufacturing job losses over the past 15 years. Instead, as this report shows, job losses can be traced to growing trade deficits in manufacturing products prior to the Great Recession and then the massive output collapse during the Great Recession.

Specifically, between 2000 and 2007, growing trade deficits in manufactured goods led to the loss of 3.6 million manufacturing jobs in that period. Between 2007 and 2009, the massive collapse in overall U.S. output hit manufacturing particularly hard (real manufacturing output fell 10.3 percent between 2007 and 2009). This collapse was followed by the slowest recovery in domestic manufacturing output in more than 60 years. Reasonably strong GDP growth over the past five years has not been sufficient to counter these trends; only about 900,000 of the 2.3 million manufacturing jobs lost during the Great Recession have been recovered. In addition, resurgence of the U.S. trade deficit in manufactured goods since 2009 has hurt the recovery of manufacturing output and employment.

In short, the collapse in demand during the Great Recession and ensuing glacial recovery was responsible for most or all of the 1.4 million net manufacturing jobs lost between 2007 and 2014. Between 2007 and 2014, productivity growth slowed noticeably, and manufacturing output experienced no net, real growth.”

There are a few things the EPI study doesn’t mention.

1. The report didn’t mention that US corporations are the biggest, and perhaps only, cause of the US trade deficit. When a US company ships jobs overseas, to say China, and then exports the products created overseas to the US, that adds to the trade deficit. Think of Apple Inc., Microsoft, Dell Computers, Nike, and thousands of other US corporations that produce their products in China, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Mexico, etc…, and then export them into the US. When was the last time you purchased a Chinese smart phone. Along with US businesses, their chinese contractors and subcontractors manufacture them for US corporations.
2. The EPI report also didn’t mention that international income redistribution scams, politely called international trade agreements, are also the primary, though not the only, conduit through which income is redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent in the USA. When a job is created by a US company abroad, or exported from the US, the difference between the old wages and the new lower wages goes straight into the pockets of the super wealthy via higher corporate profits, roaring dividends and surging share prices.
3. Largely because of trade agreements, the 1 percent steal 37 percent of all income created in the USA, compared to 8 percent in 1980.
4. Notice in the graph above that this redistribution of income since 1980 has coincided with the loss of US manufacturing jobs. Duh!
5. Those jobs supported millions of other jobs as well, such as local restaurant workers, accountants, auto salesmen, not to mention they provided the tax dollars for schools, infrastructure, police, fire, and social security nets. Those jobs don’t pay the taxes they used to because they’re not in the US anymore.
6. The demand for goods and services by the 99 percent has been curtailed due to the exportation of jobs, so manufacturing employment, as well as employment throughout the US, is the worst since the Great Depression.
7. The trade deficit hurts social security because when the rich are literally the only beneficiaries of trade scams and they don’t pay into the social security trust fund after the first $118,000 of yearly income. Meanwhile, the people who lost their jobs and whose incomes have been redistributed to the 1 percent are no longer paying into the system.
8. Wages have dropped, in large part, because so many jobs have been exported overseas. According to the Federal Reserve, nearly 28 million jobs were exported from the US from 1990 to 2010.
9. International income redistribution scams pave the legal way for jobs to be exported from the US to lesser paying nations, but they also pave the legal route for US corporations to create jobs overseas that they would otherwise have been created in the USA, meaning the job losses created by trade are understated by a hefty margin. When a job is exported to China by a US business, and the product of that job is sold in China, or exported to nations other than the USA, then it’s not statistically visible that this exported job has added to the trade deficit, even though US exports are lower than if the job still remained in the US. Under such circumstances, US exports are lower, which raises the trade deficit, increases income and wealth inequality, decimates our tax bases, and weakens social security, but it pushes the stock markets higher.
10. The Chinese government requires US companies to partner with Chinese companies, and share technology to boot, in order to sell products in China. Boeing has exported thousands of jobs to China because of this partnership clause that otherwise would have been in the USA.

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The H1B Visa: How to Outsource Jobs the American Way

400 information technology workers at Southern California Edison (SCE) are being laid off and replaced by H-1B workers from India. Some employees are training their H-1B visa holding replacements, and many have already lost their jobs.

The employees are upset and say they can’t understand how H-1B guest workers can be used to replace them.

Typically, a US corporation will layoff employees, and outsource their jobs, which is what is happening in this case, even as the Obama administration and some congressional Republicans are trying to expand the H-1B program. They want to reduce worker wages and increase corporate profits by doing so even though there is no shortage of high skill tech workers in the United States. There’s not even a shortage of low skill workers.

In all, about 500 people are being phased out at SCE, 400 of whom are being laid off. According to Computerworld, the H-1B visa-holding replacements are employees of two Indian companies — Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services — that have contracted with SCE.

According to USA Today, “If a shortage (of tech workers) did exist, wages would be rising as companies tried to attract scarce workers. Instead, legislation that expanded visas for IT personnel during the 1990s has kept average wages flat over the past 16 years. Indeed, guest workers have become the predominant source of new hires in these fields.”

The H1B visa is being used to keep Americans unemployed, wages down, and corporate profits up. In other words, H-1B is an income redistribution scam. Money is redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent. Apparently, US economic policy is simple. It’s used to only benefit the 1 percent at the expense of the 99 percent.

Wall Street profits handsomely from these visas. Higher profits mean more stock transactions, corporate bond issues, more highly profitable IPOs. Tech corporations see their stock prices soar, due to their artificially higher profits caused by their government induced artificially lower labor costs.

For more on the story, click on the links below.

Southern California Edison Workers Beyond Furious Over H1b Replacements–Computer World

Personal Liberty–Angry California Stem Workers Train H1b visa replacements

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Documentary video: China’s child labourers in its toy factories

Where have all the US jobs gone? American corporations have shipped them overseas, to lower wage nations, to China, to India, to Vietnam. That’s what free trade treaties are negotiated to do, to push wages down, to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent because the difference between the old, higher, US wages and the new, lower, third world wages increases corporate profits, while sending dividends and share prices higher, and straight into the pockets of the already rich.

Corporations, perhaps such as Nike, which has had problems with child labor in the past, are able to send or create jobs overseas thanks to corporate free trade treaties, by hiring contractors and sub-contractors over there, who then hire child labor.

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30 Photos of American Child Labor

Child labor on behalf of corporations and the 1 percent is happening all over the world, except in parts of Europe, North America, and a few other places.

Child labor was common all over the United States, but iit’s now largely confined to family owned businesses. Click the link below for a look at how it used to be in the USA. Nowadays, our need for cheap children, means the 1 percent has shipped a ton of jobs via free trade treaties overseas, so they can avoid US child labor laws and use children to make stuff over there.

It has long been recognized that when used as factory labor, children set the wages for everybody else older. Using children keeps wages lower than they would be in the absence of child labor. In other words, when corporations use child labor, either in their own factories, or in the factories of their contractors and subcontractors, the result is lower wages than would otherwise be the case. This results in a massive income redistribution from the 99 to the 1 percent via lower wages, which results in higher corporate profits, rising dividends and soaring share prices, which coincidentally, is occurring at or near record levels as we speak.

There is a massive  push by corporations and the 1 percent worldwide for child labor, which has resulted in younger and younger children being used to make products that are sold by major and lesser corporations. For example, in the Philippines, the average age of child laborers dropped from 9-17 years old in 1990 to 7-17 years old ten years later. The younger child laborers set the wage for the older child laborers which determines the wages for adults. It’s all an income redistribution scam.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/briangalindo/30-shocking-photos-of-child-labor-between-1908-and-1916

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