Disney Pads Record Profits by Replacing U.S. Workers with Cheaper H-1B Guestworkers
There was a lot to celebrate in the Magic Kingdom this year. The Disney Corporation had its most profitable year ever, with profits of $7.5 billion—up 22 percent from the previous year. Disney’s stock price is up approximately 150 percent over the past three years. These kinds of results have paid off handsomely for its CEO Bob Iger, who took home $46 million in compensation last year.
Disney prides itself on its recipe for “delighting customers,” a recipe it says includes putting employees first. They tout this as a key to their success in creating “a culture where going the extra mile for customers comes naturally” for employees. One method of creating this culture is referring to its employees as “cast members.” In fact, Disney is so proud of its organizational culture that it’s even created an institute to share its magic with other businesses (for a consulting fee, of course).
So, you would expect a firm that puts its employees first to share the vast prosperity that’s been created with the very employees who went above and beyond to help generate those record profits.
Well, how did Mr. Iger repay his workers—sorry, I mean cast members—for creating all this profit? Not with bonuses and a big raises. Instead, as the New York Times just detailed in a major report, he forced hundreds of them to train their own replacements—temporary foreign workers here on H-1B guestworker visas—before he laid them off.
What motivates a company to replace its American workers with H-1B guestworkers? One word: Profit. H-1B guestworkers are cheaper than American workers and don’t have much bargaining power, and any company would be foolish not to take advantage of this highly lucrative business model that has been inadvertently created by Congress and multiple presidential administrations. Of course, this business model is paid for by destroying the livelihoods and dignity of tens of thousands of American workers. The costs are also borne by American taxpayers, through foregone tax revenue and the additional social services that need to be provided for those newly unemployed American workers.
http://www.epi.org/blog/et-tu-mickey-mouse-disney-pads-record-profits-by-replacing-u-s-workers-with-cheaper-h-1b-guestworkers/
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(MSN, Orlando) New York Times article, LAST TASK AFTER LAYOFF AT DISNEY (excerpts):
The program has created a highly lucrative business model of bringing cheaper H-1B visa workers to substitute for Americans, said Ronil Hira, a professor of public policy at Howard University who studies visa programs and has testified before Congress about H-1B visas. A limited number of the visas, 85,000, are granted each year, and they are in hot demand.
Tech giants like Microsoft, Facebook and Google repeatedly press for increases in the annual quotas, saying there are not enough Americans with the skills they need.
H-1B immigrants work for less than American tech workers, Prof. Hira said at a hearing in March of the Senate Judiciary Committee because of weaknesses in wage regulations. The savings have been 25 percent to 49 percent less in recent cases.
The Chairman of Walt Disney Company, Robert A. IGER is co-chairman with Michael R. BLOOMBERG, the former mayor of New York, and Rupert MURDOCH, the executive chairman of News Corporation (Fox), in the "Partnership for a New American Economy", which pushes for an overhaul of immigration laws, including an INCREASE in H-1B visas.
- MSN/NYT, June, 2015, by Julia Preston, "Last Task After Layoff at Disney: Train Foreign Replacements"
*READ MORE:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements/ar-BBkE3Ud
-WHITE HOUSE PETITION to end the H-1B visa program
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov//petition/end-h-1b-program
-OP Omaha Steve Labor Group, June 3, 2015, "Laid off workers at Disney made to train foreign replacements"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/11176997
Douglas A. Blackmon for part of the US story.
