Labor bloggers to promote Employee Free Choice Act at NYC Labor Day parade? Strike updates, got a Joe's MySpace, and HR676 US National Health Care Act

Firstly, Labor Day 2008 in New York, trying to promote the Employee Free Choice Act

Myself, Richard from Union Review and Kirsten from Uniongal, the Women, Unions and Our Stories blog, are looking for sponsors to get some Employee Free Choice Act shirts, with our sites listed as supporters, to be given away at this years Labor Day Parade in New York, if all goes well we will have a major labor union donation to help us get our message out there, we are hoping that all our readers, and some people who are not as active out there in the streets will get educated on the Bill and spread the word of the facts on this legislation. It is possibly the most important bill in my lifetime.

Many law firms stand to lose a tremendous cash cow if The Employee Free Choice Act is enacted

Usually, unless the company agrees to a card check vote, when a MAJORITY of workers signs cards to be in a union there is a wait time, usually over a month later, when the employees get a chance to vote via "secret ballot" to be in a union. That's where the Lawyers and Union Avoidance law firms come into play, they make multi-billions in figuring ways to turn workers against the idea of being in a union, turning workers against one another and using any means , such as unlawful firing. . These law firms thrive on fear. They make companies whose workers are engaged in organizing drives terrified of a collective voice , which unfortunately in today's day and age is really not looking at the facts at all.

Many companies could stand to gain a great deal if they mimicked the business practices of COSTCO, who has a hands off policy and allows their workers to join a union by a simple MAJORITY card signing, some stores sign up and some do not, but their employees all benefit from not being denied that basic right. Consider how disgruntled almost every Home Depot employee is, it's a down right shame, they don't care about their shit job one bit, give them a fairs day wage, nice pension to worry about keeping, and decent medical and they would likely make the Home Depot experiance a much better one for customers and would most likely raise their share value far beyond just the next quarter. Corporations however usually do not think like that, you can learn more at "The Corporation- 23 chapters in YouTube playlist form", but let's get back to the facts in this matter.

What employers and law firms do to keep workers from joining unions and who's on their side, why America needs the Employee Free Choice Act

FACT: Many companies have closed door meetings with employees without their own pro-union workers in attendance, brain washing them to fear being in a union and in fact fear to even mention the word. In one recent article I wrote about a construction contractor here in New York, whose MAJORITY of employees signed cards to be in a union, were sent to another jobsite for a closed door meeting, were told they would get a $5 an hour raise if they voted against joining a union and in fact a former supervisor, who stood to gain nothing testifying, in an affidavit to Federal labor officials, stated when he asked his boss about the union:"He said he had about six guns on the job, and he had people there who would do whatever needed to be done. He said that he could dig a hole and put me in it and make the records showing I worked for the company disappear.", the workers fearing reprisal and thinking they were going to get a raise wound up voting overwhelmingly against the union. From: "High-Cost Condos, Low-Cost Labor—and Threats of Violence to Union Organizers"- Village Voice (6/24/08)

Last November, the NLRB ordered Auringer to post a notice promising not to make such threats. A new vote was canceled after Auringer fired 10 pro-union employees on the election's eve.

This is a good reason that America needs the Employee Free Choice Act. They sign the cards, they get into a union. No guns, no threats, no bullshit propaganda.

More reasons that the current NLRB "secret ballot' hurts working Americans

FACT: 30% of pro union employees are fired during an organizing drive, even though it is against the law, they just don't care as the NLRB has been battered by lobbyist and mega-corporations to the point of intellectuality. This is in no small part due to President Bush's appointment as NLRB Chairman, Robert Battista who just recently declined the reappointment to join a union avoidence and union busting law firm, from American Rights at Work, which I first published here on 5/5 in a story, titled "Former Bush NLRB Chairman Robert Battista, joins union avoidance law firm" which highlights the deterioration of the rights of workers during his tenure at the NLRB:

For years I've been writing that Robert Battista, former chair of the National Labor Relations Board, has been doing the bidding of anti-union employers by dismantling protections for workers under the law. Apparently, he's now going to be doing the bidding of anti-union employers and making a lot more money at notorious unionbusting firm Littler Mendelson (see a sample of their unionbusting strategies: Littler Mendelson’s Dos & Don’ts).

Battista asked Bush to withdraw his nomination as Labor Board chair, which was going nowhere, and joined the firm that John Logan of the London School of Economics called one of the "nation’s first law firms to conduct aggressive union avoidance campaigns."

Now Battista can make money telling employers how to exploit the law he helped to weaken in order to prevent their workers from organizing.

Battista is not alone, spin-doctor lawyer and lobbyist Rick Berman, the self proclaimed "Dr.Evil", corporate lobbyist for Big tobacco and the liquor industry among others, and creator of such fun filled sites as The Center for Union Facts is working hard on getting the American public against the Employee Free Choice Act, by advertising on local networks against the bill, using that d1ckhead who played Johnny Sachs in the Sopranos (probably a rank-and-file SAG member like Ronald Reagan, except a hell of a lot less talented), to scare people into thinking that if the Bill is

passed that their Democracy will be erased by ending 'secret ballot'. It's more like it will end

Mr.Berman's and other lawyers cash cow. Lawyers, corrupt politicians and corporations are the modern day gangsters, I'm starting that when they went after the Mafia they really wanted to eliminate their competition.

The commercial shows a gangster over the card signers shoulder, yeah maybe it should show a corporate lawyer counting money if this doesn't get passed

**Click the image to add your name to the petition that will wind up on the desk of the next US President

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Strike News and Job Loss
UA LU 699, IBT 282 NY Concrete drivers, American Axle updates

Lots of news going on, I've been trying to contact the Business Manager for UA Local 699 Sprinklerfitters to see if I can get any more info on the strike in Seattle Washington, last night I sent him an e-mail, still waiting for a response, I'm sure the guy is busy.

I have read that the New York concrete truck Teamsters Local 282 have gone back to the negotiating table as of yesterday, the NY Times reports that there is some progress.

Also received news of American Axle, who I recently wrote is gearing up to destroy the environment, is now looking to get rid of 400 white collar workers in the United States, now that they are escaping the land of labor rights to distant shores. What a disgrace, maybe they can rename the company to "3rd. World Nation Axle"

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Health Care For All, supported by doctors and now the Mayors Council

Big news, the single payer health care bill is being endorsed by the US Conference of Mayors(The U.S. Conference of Mayors is a nonpartisan organization of mayors representing cities with a population of 30,000 or more. It currently has about 1,100 members.), this is a bill that would get health insurance for all Americans and is strongly endorsed by a whopping 59% of American doctors, here's the text of the resolution in support of the United States National Health Insurance Act, H.R. 676:

Submitted By:
The Honorable Lois J. Frankel, Mayor of West Palm Beach, Fla.
The Honorable Wayne J. Hall Sr., Mayor of Mayor of Hempstead, N.Y.
The Honorable Carolyn K. Peterson, Mayor of Ithaca, N.Y.
The Honorable John E. Marks, III, Mayor of Tallahassee, Fla.
The Honorable Sheila Dixon, Mayor of Baltimore, Md.
The Honorable Becky Tooley, Mayor of Coconut Creek, Fla.
The Honorable Ryan Coonerty, Mayor of Santa Cruz, Calif.

WHEREAS, every person deserves access to affordable quality health care; and

WHEREAS, the number of Americans without health insurance now exceeds 47 million; and

WHEREAS, millions with insurance have coverage so inadequate that a major illness would lead to financial ruin, and medical illness and bills contribute to one-half of all bankruptcies; and

WHEREAS, proposals for “consumer directed health care” such as Health Savings Accounts or Health Reimbursement Accounts (HRAs) would only worsen this situation by penalizing the sick, discouraging prevention and saddling many working families with huge medical bills; and

WHEREAS, managed care and other market-based reforms have failed to contain health care costs, which now threaten the international competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers; and

WHEREAS, administrative waste stemming from our reliance on private insurers consumes one-third of private health spending while the single payer Medicare system has administrative costs of less than 5 percent; and

WHEREAS, U.S. hospitals spend 24.3 percent of their budgets on billing and administration while hospitals under Canada’s single payer system spend only 12.9 percent; and

WHEREAS, Harvard researchers estimate that more than $300 billion could be recovered by replacing private insurance companies with a single public payer, enough to cover the uninsured and to improve coverage for all those who now have only partial coverage; and

WHEREAS, entrusting care to profit-oriented firms diverts billions of dollars to outrageous incomes for CEOs and threatens the quality of care; and

WHEREAS, The United States National Health Insurance Act (H.R. 676) would assure universal coverage of all medically necessary services, contain costs by slashing bureaucracy, protect the doctor patient relationship, assure patients a completely free choice of doctors, and allow physicians a free choice of practice settings; and

WHEREAS, most polls show that the majority of Americans support universal health care; and

WHEREAS, as of the date of this resolution, the majority of American physicians (59 percent) believe that Single Payer is the best method of securing universal health care; and

WHEREAS, The United States National Health Insurance Act (H.R. 676) will guarantee every mayor that all residents and employees of his/her city will be fully covered for health care and save millions of taxpayer dollars now spent on premiums to provide less than full health insurance coverage for government employees; and

NOW, THEREFORE,

BE IT RESOLVED, that the United States Conference of Mayors expresses its support for The United States National Health Insurance Act (H.R. 676), and calls upon federal legislators to work towards its immediate enactment and further urges the adoption of a process to insure that health care providers justify any increase in health care costs.

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Got the MySpace up, and a shoutbox. Next we will change the layout here.

Finally did it, got a dedicated Joe's Union Review MySpace account that mirrors the blog here into the MySpace social network, it's how I met Richard at union review, theres a whole lot more to that story, but in a nutshell, I'm looking to meet more Richard's, Joe's and Kirsten's.

I also added a "shoutbox' to this site, you can easily add messages onto the site by entering text into the box and submitting it, try it out, it's right under the title "Say something even if it's wrong"

Seriously thinking of updating the site, I have been working with a layout that has more features, like having just the story introduction on the front page, with a read more lnk, ala Union review and the Building Bridges Radio blog i have been working on, let me know what you think.

Working behind the scenes a bit lately, a great win for the future of New York's labor solidarity was achieved yesterday, I'm waiting for a press release to write on it, stay tuned, and finally I leave you with...

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More H1b Visa abuse news: DOJ penalizes company for excluding US workers in favor of H1b Visa holders

"Only H-1s apply, and should be willing to transfer H-1B." - Job advertisement

I have been covering this for a while, and have seen a video by attorneys who teach companies how to disqualify American workers. It's hardly ever mentioned, but it's happening all over the country.

From ComputerWorld (3/2/08) :

DOJ settles H-1B job ad case for $45,000

A Pittsburgh-based computer consulting company that advertised for H-1B visa holders only is paying $45,000 in civil penalties to settle allegations that it discriminated against U.S. citizens, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said Thursday.

The company, iGate Mastech Inc., placed 30 job announcements between May and June of 2006 "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," the DOJ said in a statement.

A complaint against iGate Mastech was filed by the Programmers Guild in 2006. It was one of dozens of complaints lodged by the Summit, N.J.-based organization against various companies.

John Miano, who founded the guild, said in a statement that the DOJ's announcement was "is probably the most visible result" of the guild's campaign against companies that discriminate against U.S. workers "in favor of cheap H-1B workers."

One job advertisement by iGate Mastech for a Java developer on Dice Holdings Inc.'s job board said "Only H-1s apply, and should be willing to transfer H-1B."

"The problem of companies only looking for H-1B workers is a serious one," said Miano. "We are only scratching the surface right now with the companies that are brazen enough to put out ads like these."

Grace Chung Becker, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, said in a statement that the agency is "committed to protecting the right of all authorized workers in the U.S. against citizenship status discrimination."

The Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices (OSC) in the Civil Rights Division, which investigated the complaint, continues to monitor iGate to ensure compliance with the settlement agreement, the DOJ said.

From Workers Independent News (4/29/08) :

Do the competitive H1-B visas really bring the best and brightest to the United States? Jesse Russell reports:

The argument in favor of H1-B visas is that they bring needed skilled workers to the United States; however, a new study from the Center for Immigration Studies suggests that many of those who qualify for the work visas are simply "ordinary" workers. The report is called "H1-Bs: Still not The Best and the Brightest".It was authored by Norman Matloff, who says that his findings show "few of the foreign workers" are "at a level of real expertise whose description is associated with innovation". He said his findings also show that the majority meet the qualifications of "apprentice-like positions."

H1B

• Importing Workers For Pennies on the Dollar
• More H1B Visa abuse news
• Offshoring and H1B Visa abuse, the 1-2 punch to knockout US tech workers

Thanks to OhioChick at Democratic
Underground for spotting this

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Politics, Labor, the SSP, oil, starvation, corporate greed

Excerpts from the RSS feed of The Man Common

• AFL-CIO: CEOs' Pay Packages Played Role In Mortgage Crisis (4/1408) - CNN/Money

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Labor union officials, who blame the nation's mortgage mess in part on runaway executive pay, are calling for Congress to adopt a "say on pay" bill that would let shareholders weigh in on CEO compensation.

Chief executives at Countrywide Financial (CFC) and Washington Mutual Inc. ( WM) were paid "obscene amounts" even when their company's performance faltered as subprime borrowers defaulted on home mortgage loans, AFL-CIO Secretary- Treasurer Richard Trumka said at a press briefing Monday. The bad loans devalued mortgage-backed securities tied to them, leading to large write-downs in assets at a number of financial firms..

Countrywide Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo, Washington Mutual CEO Kerry Killinger, former Bear Stearns Cos. (BSC) CEO James Cayne, and former Citigroup Inc. (C) CEO Charles Prince were among those rewarded lavishly for betting on risky loans, according to labor officials. Mozilo and Cayne are also chairmen.

"When the house of cards fell, they didn't pay for it, we did," said Trumka.

• Elections in America: Millionaires Accusing Each Other of Elitism (4/14/08) - AlterNet :

But is Barack Obama really an elitist as his opponents claim? Well of course he is -- he's running for president of the United States! He wouldn't have gotten this far in life if he'd spent the past 20 years driving a truck or moonlighting as a fry cook at Arby's. Like every other successful politician in the United States, Obama is a member of America's political ruling class, which means that like every other presidential candidate in recent memory, he is typically insulated from the lives of ordinary people. Does Obama really have any idea what it's like to live like a "Real American?" Of course he doesn't, and neither do John McCain and Hillary Clinton! Does any rational person out there believe that Obama, Clinton and McCain spend their free time away from the campaign trail hanging out at Jimmy Ray's Chicken'n'Beer Depot playing darts with the common folk?

In theory, this point should be fairly obvious. Even before getting elected, most politicians made a good deal of money in their careers as lawyers, doctors, actors or oil tycoons -- you know, real salt-of-the-earth sort of work. But for reasons that have long confounded sane people everywhere, our national millionaire press corps gives positive coverage to political candidates who are the most adept at lying about their ability to connect with regular folks. And because it apparently takes too much work for our press corps to sift through the candidates' policy positions to figure out what each of them is actually offering blue-collar voters, we don't even get rational assessments of politicians' working-class cred. Instead, we get piles and piles of anecdotal evidence.

• Three Amigos Summit (4/15/08) - Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) :

President George W. Bush will soon host what has become an annual “Three Amigos Summit.” The leaders of Mexico, the United States, and Canada will be gathering in New Orleans on April 21 and 22. What do you suppose is on the agenda? A rational response to immigration, perhaps? A thoughtful renegotiation of the unpopular North American Free Trade Agreement? Lessons from Canada’s affordable medicines program?

No. No. And no. Rather than putting their heads together around pressing issues such as these, the three leaders will be advancing a so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). And while that may sound well and good, this initiative, begun in 2005, is unlikely to produce either security or prosperity. That’s because the partnership is only with big business.

The chief executives of Wal-Mart, Chevron, and 28 other large corporations are in on the closed-door negotiations, while members of Congress, journalists, and ordinary citizens are excluded. And the secrecy is not just around the presidential summits, but also the meetings of about 20 SPP working groups that carry on negotiations over the course of the year.

What’s on the table? Not much is public, but we do know that the executive powers of the three countries are hammering out regulatory changes that they claim do not require legislative approval. And given who’s in the room, it’s a safe bet that these changes will favor narrow corporate interests over the public good.

• Global hunger, corporate greed: When will enough be enough? (4/16/08) - The Jakarta Post
  

Media around the world are currently feeding off the increasing price of food everywhere. The World Bank chief has joined in with the prediction that starvation is a distinct possibility for many of the weaker nations, leading to political turmoil.

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) chief says only 14 percent of available water is used in Asia, 2 percent in Africa, with the rest flowing into the oceans each year. If this is the sorry state of affairs, what do our political leaders and their henchmen do at the office every day?

The instinctive urge to shoot the messenger is of course misdirected energy. But when you put the disparate pieces of our puzzling world on the table, the emerging picture is embarrassing indeed.

A kilogram of rice costs more than US$1 and a barrel of oil costs over $100. One influences the other. The subprime loan crisis will cost more than $1 trillion and the Iraq war will cost the United States alone as much as $3 trillion.

Different problem, same instinct. Many pundits will argue none of this has any connection to global hunger, as if these colossal costs aren't real and do not affect the common man.

It is all too easy to throw stones at our politicians and bureaucrats. But those of us in business would do well to spend a minute pondering the glass houses we go to work in.

The altar of the shareholder has become the convenient excuse for inexcusable conduct. The voracious appetite for dividends and stock prices has allowed CEOs to hold boards and investors alike to ransom.

Systemic deception has become acceptable culture in too many boardrooms, with nothing more than a wink and a nod required down the chain of command. When it gets to a point that an accountant is unable to explain complex new financial instruments and their equally befuddling acronyms, disaster cannot be far away.

Not even a decade ago, the Internet bubble exploded with disastrous consequences, ripples felt around the globe. Everybody who then believed the lessons were learned have been proven wrong not even a decade later. For every errant CEO who has gone to jail, there are hundreds who have made millions in severance pay alone. Regulators and lawmakers appear not to be troubled.

It seems as if the profit motive is no longer an adequate driver of business today. Unbridled greed has taken over, a global corporate culture spreading like a cancer unchecked.

• Big Tax Breaks for Businesses in Housing Bill (4/16/08) - NY Times

Washington - The Senate proclaimed a fierce bipartisan resolve two weeks ago to help American homeowners in danger of foreclosure. But while a bill that senators approved last week would take modest steps toward that goal, it would also provide billions of dollars in tax breaks - for automakers, airlines, alternative energy producers and other struggling industries, as well as home builders.

The tax provisions of the Foreclosure Prevention Act, which consumer groups and labor leaders say amount to government handouts to big business, show how the credit crisis, while rattling the housing and financial markets, has created beneficiaries in the power corridors of Washington.

It also shows how legislation with a populist imperative offers a chance for lobbyists to press their clients' interests.

This has proved especially true on the housing legislation, which many lawmakers and lobbyists view as one of the last opportunities before Congress grinds to a halt amid election-year politics.

In the Senate bill, the nation's biggest home builders, some now on the verge of bankruptcy, won a provision that would let them claim millions in tax refunds by charging their current losses against the huge profits they made three or four years ago. Other struggling industries would benefit from this provision.

"This is our biggest legislative effort since the Tax Reform Act of 1986," said Jerry M. Howard, chief executive of the National Association of Home Builders. Hundreds of the association's members flooded the district offices of representatives and senators while they were home for the spring recess last month.

Supporters of the bill, including Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, say it represents sound tax policy carefully focused to help stimulate the lagging economy. But the White House opposes the Senate bill, and Democratic leaders in the House not only have promised to provide more relief for individual homeowners, but have also dropped the corporate tax provisions from their version.

Downtrodden automakers - Ford and General Motors - were especially dogged in securing a tax break that would let them collect alternative minimum tax credits, also known as the A.M.T., that would otherwise be out of reach because they did not pay enough taxes in recent years to claim a rebate.

If the provision becomes law, it could mean checks up to $40 million for the car manufacturers, as long as the companies had made investments in plant or equipment in that amount.

A Ford spokesman, Mike Moran, said he was aware that Ford would benefit from the tax credit in the bill passed by the Senate. But Mr. Moran said that the credit applied to a range of industries, not just automakers. A General Motors spokesman could not be reached.

Domestic airlines and manufacturers other than automakers would be eligible to claim the A.M.T. break as well. One lobbyist said that the companies that had sought the tax breaks in meetings with lawmakers included Ford, General Motors, American Airlines, Northwest Airlines and Goodyear Tire and Rubber.

Companies could claim only one of the new tax breaks, which in all, are expected to cost $6 billion through 2018. The jockeying among industry groups, including Realtors, home builders and bankers, is certain to intensify in coming weeks as lawmakers move to reconcile the Senate bill with a more ambitious package of housing legislation now under way in the House.

• The End of the World as You Know It…and the Rise of the New Energy World Order (4/15/08) - TomDispatch.com

Take the food riots now spreading across the planet because the prices of staples are soaring, while stocks of basics are falling. In the last year, wheat (think flour) has risen by 130%, rice by 74%, soya by 87%, and corn by 31%, while there are now only eight to 12 weeks of cereal stocks left globally. Governments across the planetary map are shuddering. This is a fast growing horror story and, though the cry in the streets of Cairo and Port au Prince might be for bread, this, too, turns out to be a tale largely ruled by energy: Too many acres turned over to corn (and sugar cane) for the creation of biofuels; a historic drought in Australia and other climate-change-induced extremes of weather -- a result of the burning of fossil fuels -- that have affected crop yields; and many new middle-class consumers, in China and elsewhere, coming on line, with a growing desire for meat, the production of which is heavily petroleum based.

From resource wars to oil wars (the subjects of his last two books), Michael Klare, Tomdispatch's energy expert, has long been ahead of the curve when it came to ways in which our planet was being reshaped at the most basic level. Today, he offers Tomdispatch readers a peek into some of the key themes in his staggering new book, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy. If you want to grasp the true shape of our shaky world, of where exactly we've been and where we might be going, this is a book not to be missed. It offers the profile-in-formation of a shape-shifting planet, a planet in transition and on a road to nowhere pretty. Check out as well the latest Tomdispatch brief video (produced by TD's Brett Story) -- in which Klare discusses key issues in his new book -- by clicking here. Tom

• Are Americans unusually stupid or is it something our president put in the water? (4/15/08) - TruthDig

By so unabashedly embracing the most glaringly failed U.S. president ever, McCain has surrendered the right to be considered an independent candidate, judged on his own merits and personal history. A vote for McCain is a vote for that rancid recipe mixing religious bigotry, imperial arrogance and corporate greed that he had stood against in the run-up to the 2000 presidential election when he challenged George W. Bush, but to which he now has capitulated.

Too harsh? Then consider just how tight the space is between the rocks of our failed Mideast policy and the hard place of our impending financial disaster. The sudden out-of-control spike in the cost of oil—the key short-term market variable, the specter that stokes inflation fear and limits moves to avoid recession—is not a natural disaster or in any realistic way the result of inefficiency in the use of energy. What more than doubled the price of petroleum in the short run was not that too many of us bought Hummers, but rather that the political stability of the region that contains the bulk of that oil was deliberately and recklessly roiled.

In the name of fighting the 9/11 terrorists, the Bush administration overthrew the one Arab government most adamantly opposed to the Saudi financiers of that son of their system, Osama bin Laden. Instead of confronting the royal leaders of a kingdom that supplied 15 of the 19 hijackers, we invaded a nation that supplied not a single one. While Bush overthrew Saddam Hussein, who had no ties to the hijackers, he embraced the leaders of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the only three nations in the world that had diplomatically recognized and supported the Taliban sponsors of al-Qaida.

Consider that historical marker at a time when the UAE and Saudi Arabia bankers are buying major positions in distressed U.S. financial and other key corporate institutions. I know, it all sounds too conspiratorial, like imagining that we might wake up from this national nightmare and discover that the CEO of Halliburton, who replaced Dick Cheney when the latter selected himself to be Bush’s vice president, now has his headquarters in Dubai, tucked safely into the obscenely oil-revenue-rich UAE that our troops were sent to Iraq to protect.

There is no national outrage, or even seriously sustained media interest, over the fact that Cheney’s old company profited enormously from ripping off U.S. tax dollars going into the Iraq occupation. Nor is there even much curiosity about the shenanigans of Halliburton, which is doing business with Arab oil sheiks at a time when the U.S. banks these Middle Eastern oil interests bought into are moving to foreclose on American homeowners.

It’s just the sort of egregious betrayal of the trust of the taxpayers that Sen. McCain would have gone after, before he sought to don the soiled robes of the Bush presidency.

• Biofuel: the burning question (4/15/08) - The Independent

Graham Wynne, chief executive of the RSPB, said: "The volume of biofuel that can be genuinely described as sustainable is at present very small indeed and is nowhere near enough to warrant the 2.5 per cent obligation. The impacts of biofuel production on forests and wetlands are already being seen worldwide. It is a tragedy that customers' money is going to be spent on driving this destruction."

The World Bank and the UN have, in recent days, expressed concern about the impact of biofuels on world food prices, sparking riots from Haiti to the Philippines. Gordon Brown, who has put the issue on the agenda at the forthcoming G8 summit, has also voiced concerns at EU level about deforestation and loss of habitats caused by biofuel production. And Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, raised the issue at the weekend's G7 meeting in Washington.

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Guest commenter, NY Congressional district 20 candidate John Wallace responds to H1B Visa abuse

Congressional district 20 hopeful John Wallace is a self-employed businessman and also host a call-in blog talk radio show. He was a police officer for 30+ years and authored a book about a WWII Prisoner of War. He considers himself a Conservative with some ideas that can be considered Liberal. He along with some other Congressional candidates have agreed to only take donations from people within their districts(and online), from no Political Action Funds and a limit of $76 from any single donator. You can read more about him at his newly launched Freedom, Liberty and Sovereignty Blog. Check it out, while you may not agree with him on all the issues, he does bring up a lot of facts that are mostly ignored and is spot on in his writings about bribery funding for both sides in the upcoming elections, abolishment of the Federal Reserve, Free Trade agreements and limited government. I'd like to see his views on NCLB, Media Consolidation and toxic products

So, without further ado, here Mr.Wallace response to "Offshoring and H1B Visa abuse, the 1-2 punch to knockout US tech workers" from (2/26/08):

THE CURRENT H-1B VISA PROGRAM MUST BE ABOLISHED OR REFORMED!

The H-1B visa program was originally created to assist American employers who were having trouble finding American high-tech workers for their businesses. It allowed a fixed number of foreign workers come to the United States to “temporarily” fill those positions while the American companies and the federal government invested time and money in upgrading the training of American workers to meet the new skill levels required.

Although the program was originally designed to benefit American businesses, it has now become a program that benefits foreign companies with offices in America, rather than American companies, because the majority of the H-1B visas are now going to foreign-owned companies. Data just released by the federal government shows that offshore outsourcing firms, mostly from India, dominate the list of companies awarded H-1B visas in 2007. Indian outsourcers accounted for nearly 80% of the visa petitions approved last year for the top 10 participants in the program. These statistics should set off some alarms in congress that the H-1B visa program is not working as it was intended. Aqccording to data from the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, Infosys Technologies and Wipro, two companies based in Bangalore, top the list of visa beneficiaries in 2007, with 4,559 and 2,567 approved visa petitions, respectively. Microsoft and Intel were the only two traditional U.S. tech companies among the top 10. Microsoft received only 959 visa petition approvals, or one fifth as many as Infosys, while Intel got only 369. How is this helping American workers and American businesses?

The H-1B work visa program was supposed to be used to bolster the U.S. economy by helping American-owned companies. Under the program, American companies can use the speciality visa to hire foreign software programmers or computer scientists with rare skills in order to encourage innovation and improving competitiveness. Instead, foreign companies such as Infosys and Wipro are using our own government program to undermine the American economy by wiping out American jobs. These foreign-owned companies are bringing low-cost workers into the U.S., training them in the offices of American business clients, and then rotating them back home after a year or two so they can provide low cost, out-sourced tech services that causes American IT workers to lose their jobs. How is this helping American workers and American businesses?

Even though approximately 80,000 Americans lost their jobs in the first two months of 2008, incredibly some members in the House of Representatives have introduced legislation to help these big foreign-owned international corporations bring in an increasing number of foreign workers that will put even more Americans out of work. Since its inception, the H-1B Visa program has been rampant with fraud. In the first half of 2006, the Programmer’s Guild, a group representing U.S. worker interests, filed over 300 discrimination complaints against companies who posted “H-1B visa holders only” ads on internet job boards. It’s obvious that these foreign-owned companies are only targeting foreign workers and undermining the system by bypassing the American worker. How is this helping American workers and American businesses?

While a bill to reduce illegal immigration (HR-4088) is stalled in Congress with the House leadership refusing to bring it to the floor for a vote, Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona) has introduced “The Innovation Employment Act” (HR-5630) that would increase the cap of H-1B visas from 65,000 a year to 130,000 a year. In addition, there would be no cap on H-1B applications for foreign graduate students attending U.S. colleges and studying science, technology and related fields. Currently, there's a 20,000 student-a-year cap on visas for graduate students in all fields. The legislation would eventually increase the H-1B cap to 180,000 and the total number of foreigners admitted under this work and graduate education proposal could reach almost 300,000 a year. To make matters worse for the American IT workers, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has introduced the “Strengthening United States Technology and Innovation Act” (H.R. 5642), which would TRIPLE the current H-1B visa cap to 195,000 in 2008 and 2009 and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif) wants to make Rep. Smith’s increase permanent. How is this helping American workers and American businesses?

There is no real shortage of American information technology workers. It’s just that the large high-tech international companies want to turn these hard earned information technology skills into as cheap a labor commodity as possible at the American workers’ expense. On March 12th Bill Gates appeared before Congress calling for an increase in H-1B visas. Two days later, without soliciting comments from any representatives of American IT workers, Congress introduced two bills that would double or triple the H-1B base cap. Why weren’t the representatives of American IT workers allowed to be heard? Could the average of $25 million dollars a year that members of congress receive in bribes (I mean campaign contributions) from the Computer Equipment and Services Industry, have something to do with this? Here’s some interesting campaign contribution statistics compiled by the Center for Responsible Politics at www.opensecrets.org that shows why congress may be so eager to support the requests of the Computer Equipment and Services Industry over the American IT workers. Here’s how much the high-tech industries have contributed to federal campaigns:

2000 - $38.9 million
2002 - $26.7 million
2004 - $29.0 million
2006 - $18.4 million
2008 - $15.5 million (partial)

These two bills (H.R. 4088 and H.R. 5642) will do nothing to curb the fraud in the H-1B visa program and they will have serious consequences for American citizens that are employed in the information technology field. The proposed legislation will displace even more American IT workers and outsource their good paying, high-technology jobs to foreign off-shore companies. We must learn from our mistakes. The current H-1B visa program has not served the best interests of American workers nor American companies. The current program has actually helped foreign competitors, with branch offices in the USA, hire almost no Americans and shift as many American jobs overseas as possible. How is this helping American workers and American businesses?

The current H-1B Program, as designed, is detrimental and harmful to the welfare of American workers and American high-tech businesses. It should be abolished. In it’s place and only if it is needed, H-1B type legislation should be written in a way that actually benefits American companies, American workers and American students thinking of embarking on a high-tech career.
Any new H-1B Visa legislation should be simple and have the following criteria to help Americans only:

IT MUST BENEFIT BOTH AMERICAN WORKERS AND AMERICAN COMPANIES: The H-1B Visa Program was originally designed to help American companies. Any new H-1B Visa Program should apply ONLY to American-based business entities and the H-1B visas should only be issued to foreign employees after proof is supplied that no American worker has either applied or is otherwise qualified for the position.

BENEFIT FOR AMERICAN STUDENTS: Companies that hire H-1B visa holders should pay an annual fee for each visa holder they hire to be used to fund scholarships for American citizen high school and college students interested in high-tech careers and enrolled in STEM educational programs (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics).

By:
JOHN W. WALLACE
Candidate for Congress
New York’s 20th Congressional District
www.FreedomCandidate.com

March 25, 2008 2:20 PM

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More H1B Visa abuse news

More supporting news on the story-> Offshoring and H1B Visa abuse, the 1-2 punch to knockout US tech workers

Comment On Offshoring and H1B Visa abuse....

(3/16/08) I was listening to the testimony of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and his points on requesting Congress for increase in H1 B visa quotas. He was mentioning that H1 B employees gets paid very high salary and most of the H1 B guys remain in US through Green card. See companies like Microsoft do not abuse H1 B visas program but there are many-2 big Indian companies are abusing these programs and also pay very low salaries to the H1 B workers keep them in a pathetic condition in USA.

Comapnies like Infosys, Wipro, TCS get the job of Software Designer, Architecht, Data Base Adminsitrator done from their employees but pay them the prevaling wage of a junior programmar as they file there H1 in junior category and pay them less salary. He only gets paid as per a Junior Programmer salary say 60 K USD where as his day to day job responsibility should be compensated by 100 K or more.

Indian H1 B employee is completely on the mercy of his Indian employer as the moment H1 is cancelled the person becomes illegal in USA so he continue to bear the abusive practices from his employer. Hiring an American would need the IT consulting to pay almost 30 K more per year for the same job responsibilities. This way of paying Indian engineer less salary brings down the overall salaries for Americans.

Most of the Indian IT consulting do not file Green Card for the employees as they want employee to be temporary for six years in USA and always be dependant on the H1 sposnoring employer. Say if they file H1 B Visa for 1000 employees but only file 10 Green card out of those 1000 H1B guys.

Mr Gates was asking to increase the quota for H1 B but most of the quota would be abused by the Indian IT Companies. Only 20 % of the quota would be used by the big American companies like Microsoft and they might be
utilizing this H1 B program correctly but rest of the 80% would be used by Indian IT consulting companies who would abuse the emoloyees and bring down the entire salary level for American employees.

One H1 B employee works in USA and be a Onsite coordinator but in his team there are 5 engineers in India. So he becomes a coordinator and 5 people work in India. So one h1 B is replacing atleast 5-6 jobs in USA.

I know a very close friend of mine who is on a H1 B program and get paid only 65 K per year whereas the same job being done by an American is getting paid about 90K per year. He cannot raise his voice as his Indian employer would kick him back to India. So this way the abuse continues and if the congress increase the H1 B quota the more Indian employees would get exploited, IT salary would come down further and jobs would continue to get shipped to India.

And From The Star Ledger

Editorial: Going after the skills of foreign workers (3/16/08) Excerpt
A well-intended visa program needs expansion and reform.

Four years ago, the Office of Management and Budget found the program "vulnerable to fraud or abuse" and made several suggestions for reform, none of which has been implemented.

In most cases, the H1-B program does not require that employers hire a U.S. worker who may want a particular job, and a U.S. worker can be displaced from a job in favor of a foreign worker, according to the Department of Labor. In fact, contrary to widely held belief, most employers using the H1-B program do not have to search at all for a U.S. worker willing to fill a job.

Of the 10 companies that filed the most requests for H1-B visas in 2006, seven had headquarters in India. Those companies use H1-B visas mainly to send workers to the United States for training before bringing them back to work in low-wage countries.

Oversight has been less than rigorous. The Department of Labor certified 99.5 percent of the nearly 1 million applications that it reviewed from 2002 to 2005. A check of the same applications by the Government Accountability Office found thousands of instances where the wage rates being paid to H1-B workers fell significantly below the prevailing wage, a violation of the rules. And that GAO review merely looked at the information provided by the employers themselves, without verifying the information's accuracy. In fact, the H1-B program does not require any verification of the information presented by employers. Many of the workers brought in under the program actually earn less than the median U.S. income.
Read Full Story

Thanks to Global Writers, a blog which according to their about: The blog is linked to the ILO International Training Centre course ‘Communicating labour rights’. Blog

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Offshoring and H1B Visa abuse, the 1-2 punch to knockout US tech workers

"he estimated 500,000 people in the U.S. on H-1Bs are by definition citizens of other nations, and they're usually beholden to employers that can transfer them home at will."- BusinessWeek 1-31-08

H1B Visa Abuse
Do as we say or get deported
From the green building in which I recently left, where the entire environmental controls will be monitored from the desk of another country, to the tech support jobs that Dell led the way into the Indian nation, the brighter of our countrymen, the Techie geeks, are under attack. Not just from the threat of offshoring, but by the threat of misuse of H1B Visa's by unscrupulous employers on our own shores. It is called the PERM process and the following video made by Immigration attorneys from Cohen & Grigsby explains just how to disqualify qualified US Workers in favor of foreign workers, who by the way must keep their job at all costs or be deported. Sounds like a new form of slavery.

Immigration attorneys from Cohen & Grigsby explains how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and the steps they go through to disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers. See what Bush and Congress really mean by a "shortage of skilled U.S. workers." Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and thousands of other companies are running fake ads in Sunday newspapers across the country each week.

From : networkworld.com

Cisco caught in maelstrom over fake job ads to hire H-1B visa holders
Submitted by Brad Reese on Fri, 06/29/2007 - 2:04pm.

Patrick Thibodeau reported in Computerworld, that Cisco may have advertised for a U.S. job position that really wasn't open to American citizens.
June 28, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Cisco Systems Inc. placed a help wanted ad for a network consulting engineer in the Chicago Tribune on Sunday, June 3, and David Huber, a networking professional who lives in Chicago, was interested in the job.

The ad copy read, "No phone calls please." But Huber, a University of Chicago graduate whose prior work included being the lead LAN/WAN network engineer for NASA's aborted X-33 rocket plane project, called Cisco and asked for the person named in the ad.

"Before I send my resume into a black hole, I always like to talk to the recruiter first," he said this week. A Cisco telephone operator gave Huber the phone number of an immigration law firm in Santa Clara, Calif. "Why would I be talking with somebody at an immigration law firm about this?" he wondered.

Huber said his question was answered a couple of weeks later when he saw the controversial YouTube video that shows an attorney from a Pittsburgh law firm providing advice to employers on how to deal with government requirements for seeking U.S. workers to fill jobs before hiring foreign workers.

"It seems obvious to me after that video what's going on," Huber said.

This isn't just an isolated incident, most if not all of the major companies are doing this and lobbying to get more H1B visa allowances pushed through Legislature. In fact a recent bill which was supposedly for border enforcement contained wording to increase the allowed H1B Visa's annual cap to increase from from 65,000 to between 130,000 and 195,000(*See Below). The companies keep saying the same old bullshit to allow this, but according to Information Week story entitled No, The Tech Skills Shortage Doesn't Exist:

none of the indicators demonstrates a systemic shortage. While exceptional talent or skills in emerging technologies will always, by definition, be in short supply, the most relevant market indicators--wages and employee risk--clearly show there's no broad-based scarcity of U.S. IT workers. In their zeal to enlist government help to expand the supply of tech workers through foreign guest worker programs, employers are misrepresenting IT labor market conditions.

BusinessWeek points out how many foreign companies are accused of underpaying foreigners on work visas and hurting US wages in the process in the article: Are H1B workers getting bilked?

But this was no dream job come true. Goel's base salary was $23,310, about half the $44,000 that Patni had said it would pay on the visa application, according to a lawsuit he has filed against the company. When Goel complained, one official said that Patni would brand him a "troublemaker" and that his parents in India would be harassed unless he stopped, the suit alleges.

How do the candidates feel about the subject? Heres a CNN story with Hillary from 6/2/07, none of the other front runners seem to have an opinion.

Off Shoring
Cheaper workers, do you see the savings? I think not!
Heres a partial list of the job impact of off shoring by the people at TechsUnite.org who state:

Offshore Events Display
most recent event: 02/01/2007
last updated: 09/22/2005

The offshore tracker is based upon news accounts and employees. It tracks instances of offshoring beginning in January 2001 and using a list of companies derived from media sources. The tracker is not scientific in determining the precise number of jobs lost, since media reports are not always accurate, we do not have access to all media reports, and many instances of offshoring go unreported. However, this tracker is the only source that accounts for and aggregates the number of jobs lost due to offshoring. In fact, we know the current totals are low. For that reason. we need your help to let us know which employers - companies and state agencies - are offshoring jobs. We will be updating the tracker regularly by encouraging individuals to submit new event information and by continuing to monitor the media

Top 10 Offshoring companies

Company------Most Recent---Jobs Offshored--Est. jobs lost

IBM--------------11/20/2006-----63700---------45247

EDS--------------06/27/2005-----22400----------7950

Dell--------------02/01/2007-----17450-----------7100

Cognizant-------11/01/2004-----15000-------data unavailable

Siemens AG----03/02/2004-----15000-------data unavailable

GE----------------12/20/2004-----14250-------data unavailable

Convergys------04/13/2005-----14000-----------160

Accenture------06/27/2005-----13000------------90

Computer
Sciences---------06/27/2005-----10800---------5400
Corp

Intel--------------10/01/2005-----10426----------4126

The complete list of Offshoring can be found here, I don't know what to tell anyone to do about it other than what I always do when confronted with a guy named "Sam" on the phone who obviously doesn't speak English very well, I tell him I would like to speak to someone who is English speaking as a first language, Most companies have a remaining call center in the states for obtuse people like myself. I stopped buying Dell and dropped Verizon DSL because of this exact problem of sending our jobs out of the country. Did it make a difference, probably not, but I refuse to knowingly give my hard earned money to a corporation who doesn't reinvest in our country. If there were more people like myself we wouldn't be in this predicament.

The fight for the tech workers is the same fight for the rest of us here in America, Joe's Union Review stands with you in your plight. Please feel free to give me any news to spread to the masses.

Resources for Tech workers:

• TechsUnite
• Alliance At IBM- CWA Local 1701
• *The Programmers Guild, who is asking that people send a Fax to Congress to remove the H1B visa increases, which for some strange reason are attached into the text of H.R. 4065: Border Enforcement, Employment Verification, and Illegal Immigration Control Act, you can grab the letter to fax here (PDF file)
• WashTech - Washington Alliance For Technology Workers - CWA Local 37083
• Earleir story I wrote at UnionReview: Corp Objective: Disqualify qualified American workers, get H-1b Visa's for non-citizens

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