The New York Times is reporting that the Walt Disney Company recently laid off about 250 technology workers, including some software developers, and replaced them with foreign workers holding H-1B visas. Adding insult to injury, the company asked the laid off staff to keep working for three months in order to train the people who would take over their jobs.
“I just couldn?t believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and take over our jobs exactly,” said one former Disney employee. “It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your job. I still can?t grasp it.”
The article says that several other companies have recently conducted layoffs under similar circumstances. “The layoffs at Disney and at other companies, including the Southern California Edison power utility, are raising new questions about how businesses and outsourcing companies are using the temporary visas, known as H-1B, to place immigrants in technology jobs in the United States,” it says. The piece adds, “Too often, critics say, the visas are being used to bring in immigrants to do the work of Americans for less money, with laid-off American workers having to train their replacements.”
