OT: Battle Ground Zero: Murrieta: Invasion of America

[CA renter]

[quote=harvey][quote=CA renter]Thank you, BG. It seems that Pri is completely unable to do any research of his own, while expecting others to spoon-feed him every single fact and detail[/quote]

Someone on the internet says they know some people that told them something, and you call that “research?”

No doubt you’ve cited BG posts in all your academic publications – give that girl a PhD!

But let’s get past the personal comments about me, or your gossip about what you want others to think of me. If you’re really on a higher plane then let’s see you set an example:

Tell us again about a demographic been displaced (besides BGs pals, lol.): Not someone making an excuse because they halfheartedly looked for a job and failed…an actual, documented population of people that have been displaced by immigrants in the US.

Still waiting for an actual answer, and the Piggs see clearly when you weasel out with an insult or “do some research” cop out.

While we are at it … What’s your general position on refugee immigrants? Can you make a direct statement, without innuendo, or speculation about what someone else might think in some hypothetical situation?

Can you elevate the conversation about the middle-school level, and say something with substance?

EDIT: I see that flu just posted some credible research. Should his wife also go dictionary shopping?[/quote]

What flu posted has nothing at all to do with the issue being discussed. As already noted by other posters, farm workers are not paid nearly enough as it is, and these immigrant workers (especially the undocumented ones) are willing to live in cramped, decrepit, filthy shacks; or camp out in river valleys and hillsides. They have been working these miserable, back-breaking jobs without overtime, and are often abused and disrespected by their employers. American workers are not willing to do that, and we should not be striving to plumb the deepest depths of what workers are willing to accept.

And I wasn’t referring to BG’s comment as research. All you have to do is look at the demographic shifts in some key industries [I’ll give you a head start: construction, manufacturing, warehousing, trucking, food service (esp. cooks and fast-food workers), hospitality, child care, auto repair, etc.), check out the demographic changes, and then compare that to the jobs where pay hasn’t kept up with inflation.

Here’s a fairly recent story about Disney dumping their local talent in favor of immigrants.

Now, try doing some of your own research. I’ve just given you a head start since you’re clueless about how to do this on your own.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=CA renter][quote=harvey][quote=CA renter]Thank you, BG. It seems that Pri is completely unable to do any research of his own, while expecting others to spoon-feed him every single fact and detail[/quote]

Someone on the internet says they know some people that told them something, and you call that “research?”

No doubt you’ve cited BG posts in all your academic publications – give that girl a PhD!

But let’s get past the personal comments about me, or your gossip about what you want others to think of me. If you’re really on a higher plane then let’s see you set an example:

Tell us again about a demographic been displaced (besides BGs pals, lol.): Not someone making an excuse because they halfheartedly looked for a job and failed…an actual, documented population of people that have been displaced by immigrants in the US.

Still waiting for an actual answer, and the Piggs see clearly when you weasel out with an insult or “do some research” cop out.

While we are at it … What’s your general position on refugee immigrants? Can you make a direct statement, without innuendo, or speculation about what someone else might think in some hypothetical situation?

Can you elevate the conversation about the middle-school level, and say something with substance?

EDIT: I see that flu just posted some credible research. Should his wife also go dictionary shopping?[/quote]

What flu posted has nothing at all to do with the issue being discussed. As already noted by other posters, farm workers are not paid nearly enough as it is, and these immigrant workers (especially the undocumented ones) are willing to live in cramped, decrepit, filthy shacks; or camp out in river valleys and hillsides. They have been working these miserable, back-breaking jobs without overtime, and are often abused and disrespected by their employers. American workers are not willing to do that, and we should not be striving to plumb the deepest depths of what workers are willing to accept.

And I wasn’t referring to BG’s comment as research. All you have to do is look at the demographic shifts in some key industries [I’ll give you a head start: construction, manufacturing, warehousing, trucking, food service (esp. cooks and fast-food workers), hospitality, child care, auto repair, etc.), check out the demographic changes, and then compare that to the jobs where pay hasn’t kept up with inflation.

Here’s a fairly recent story about Disney dumping their local talent in favor of immigrants.

Now, try doing some of your own research. I’ve just given you a head start since you’re clueless about how to do this on your own.[/quote]Interesting article, CAR. I don’t understand how the two longtime Disney employees in the story got cornered into training their own replacements (for weeks at a time?). One worker stated that he “had” to train his (H1B) replacement as a condition of his severance. So, at the time the H1B worker appeared on the job, he must have known that he was a “short-timer!” How humiliating! Couldn’t he have cited his job description which may not have included training another employee at his own level as to why he couldn’t do it? If I was asked to train someone to do everything I do and I hadn’t already given notice or didn’t have an impending medical leave or FMLA coming up, I would likely refuse. If an employee gets fired, they’re usually eligible for UI. The employer will argue in the UI hearing that the employee was “insubordinate” (because they refused to train their “replacement” when they weren’t even told that the H1B was hired to be their replacement)! I would be asking some tough questions of my supervisor/boss if an H1B worker (or anyone for that matter) showed up at my desk to learn everything about my job and there didn’t appear to be any opening in the organization for them!

If the employer wants to do this, let them fire me and have the new, green, H1B and let them bumble thru their first weeks on the job without me. You pay for what you get in this life. All my institutional knowledge would walk right out the door between my ears and straight to the unemployment office without even passing go or collecting $200! Especially if my performance evals were sterling like the gentleman’s were in the story.

I guess I don’t understand why the two protagonists in the story cooperated with their employer.

[FlyerInHi]

BG and CArenter, does anything you say justify the shameful demonstrations against refugees, children and adults?

[bearishgurl]

I just read a link within the article supplied by CAR:

They (the laid off employees) said only a handful of those laid off were moved directly by Disney to other company jobs. The rest were left to compete for positions through Disney job websites. Despite the company’s figures, few people they knew had been hired, they said, and then often at a lower pay level. No one was offered retraining, they said. One former worker, a 57-year-old man with more than 10 years at Disney, displayed a list of 18 jobs in the company he had applied for. He had not had more than an initial conversation on any one, he said.

Disney “made the difficult decision to eliminate certain positions, including yours,” as a result of “the transition of your work to a managed service provider,” said a contract presented to employees on the day the layoffs were announced. It offered a “stay bonus” of 10 percent of severance pay if they remained for 90 days. But the bonus was contingent on “the continued satisfactory performance of your job duties.” For many, that involved training a replacement. Young immigrants from India took the seats at their computer stations.

“The first 30 days was all capturing what I did,” said the American in his 40s, who worked 10 years at Disney. “The next 30 days, they worked side by side with me, and the last 30 days, they took over my job completely.” To receive his severance bonus, he said, “I had to make sure they were doing my job correctly.”

In late November, this former employee received his annual performance review, which he provided to The New York Times. His supervisor, who was not aware the man was scheduled for layoff, wrote that because of his superior skills and “outstanding” work, he had saved the company thousands of dollars. The supervisor added that he was looking forward to another highly productive year of having the employee on the team.

The employee got a raise. His severance pay had to be recalculated to include it.

The former Disney employee who is 57 worked in project management and software development. His résumé lists a top-level skill certification and command of seven operating systems, 15 program languages and more than two dozen other applications and media.

“I was forced into early retirement,” he said. The timing was “horrible,” he said, because his wife recently had a medical emergency with expensive bills. Shut out of Disney, he is looking for a new job elsewhere.

Former employees said many immigrants who arrived were younger technicians with limited data skills who did not speak English fluently and had to be instructed in the basics of the work. . . .

(parenthesized material mine)

This is disgusting to me. In CA, weekly UI benefits are equal to 1/13 of 62.5% of one’s highest quarter’s pay in the past 18 months, IIRC and is not subject to state income tax. With a layoff letter in hand, a CA-based employee would not have to stay behind and train their replacement. They could elect to leave at or before the time their “replacement” arrived and not make it easy for their employer to replace them seamlessly and be unequivocally eligible for UI.

If they stayed behind to train their new (foreign) “charge,” the Disney layoffs were eligible for full pay for three months plus a 10% “bonus” (minus taxes) IF their (H1b) trainee was performing their job competently at the end of the 3-month training period.

That’s nothing to write home about. That’s not even as much as UI and Disney’s “internal job lure” to the laid off employees was a farce. I don’t know about FL but in CA, this would have been a bad deal for the longtime displaced employee and a waste of their time when they could have been actively looking FT for a new job 3 months earlier while still having uncollected UI benefits to fall back on.

I don’t understand how these employees fell for Disney’s dangling mini-carrot. Perhaps FL’s UI benefits aren’t adequate.

[no_such_reality]

In California, UI benefits are capped at $450/wk.

That’s $2200/month.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=no_such_reality]In California, UI benefits are capped at $450/wk.

That’s $2200/month.[/quote]For 2016? I haven’t looked in awhile. Even so, if the worker is eligible for the entire $450 week for a maximum of 26 weeks ($11,700) and the laid-off worker is FREE!

The laid-off worker is free to look for another job from day one. If they got any “severance” at all, it must be reported to EDD. The worker is still eligible for 26 weeks of UI from the week after the severance pay ends.

Let’s just say these laid-off Disney IT employees were making an average of $80K annually. That’s $20K gross for 3 months FT work plus a $2K “bonus” (~$22K) IF their cheaper foreign replacement “gets it” after 3 months (MINUS ALL PAYROLL TAXES)! It’s still not worth it . . . that is if FL has a ~$450 cap on their weekly UI payment.

I would never train my replacement where I didn’t initiate my own absence from work. H@ll no! The employer can kiss my a$$. Never in a million years would I give away the store to a person hired as my replacement . . . unbeknownst to me :=0

Workers should realize that collecting UI usually throws them into a lower tax bracket and they don’t have to have Federal taxes taken from their weekly benefit. Also, in CA, if they take another job and then suspend their UI, they are still able to collect the balance of the claim if they are terminated within that 26-week time period. If not, they can file a new claim after the 26-week time period based upon a newer 18-month wage record and collect it for 26 weeks again. The new weekly benefit may be more or less than the weekly benefit from the old claim.

[Coronita]

.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=flu].[/quote]Hey, flu . . . I did manage to capture your deleted quote. Would you like me to post it?

:=D

So were you saying here that you WOULD train your replacement if you didn’t initiate your impending absence and you were asked to by your employer?

I can’t quite make out from your post whether you consider yourself to be a “team player” in an industry where these shenanigans are “common.”

[SK in CV]

[quote=bearishgurl]The laid-off worker is free to look for another job from day one. If they got any “severance” at all, it must be reported to EDD. The worker is still eligible for 26 weeks of UI from the week after the severance pay ends.

Let’s just say these laid-off Disney IT employees were making an average of $80K annually. That’s $20K gross for 3 months FT work plus a $2K “bonus” (~$22K) IF their cheaper foreign replacement “gets it” after 3 months (MINUS ALL PAYROLL TAXES)! It’s still not worth it . . . that is if FL has a ~$450 cap on their weekly UI paymen

[/quote]

Severance pay doesn’t affect UI benefits in California, irrespective of whether it’s paid in a lump sum or periodically. It does, however, in Florida, where maximum weekly benefits are $275/wk, and are reduced by periodic severance.

[Coronita]

[quote=bearishgurl][quote=flu].[/quote]Hey, flu . . . I did manage to capture your deleted quote. Would you like me to post it?

:=D

So were you saying here that you WOULD train your replacement if you didn’t initiate your impending absence and you were asked to by your employer?

I can’t quite make out from your post whether you consider yourself to be a “team player” in an industry where these shenanigans are “common.”[/quote]

You know, I thought what I posted and changed my mind because folks have already made up there mind, so do whatever you want to say.

What Disney did was pretty shitty and H1-B abuse does happen in some parts of the business. But like I posted, before I deleted, I’ve never been laid off in the past 20 years and from all the companies that I’ve worked at, primary was in R&D and never had an issue finding something better with better pay 20 years running.

The fact is the matter, is what happens in the industry you read about the worst offenders, and people who aren’t in the industry can extrapolate that into pointing it out to being widespread across industries, even to tech industries unrelated to IT, that’s just being ill-informed. And if well, considering you aren’t in the industry, if that’s what you want to believe, if you say so.

If you want to grind your axe because you enjoy doing that, that’s your choice. Besides you being grossly mischaracterizing the problem, that’s up to you.

And my peers think I’m a team player just fine. That’s why whenever I go, usually a group of people follow me. And like I said, I’ve never had problems finding something better where my total comp package is better than before. And l’m not alone.

For tech/IT, there will always be a fraction of the industry that is cut throat, and there will always be a fraction of the industry in which you have some people that get the short end of the stick because for whatever reasons they are in the wrong place at the wrong time, whether it’s there’s own skills, their timing, or what have you. And those that get screwed tend to be the most vocal about things. But if things were simply that bad that widespread, then the markets would have already taken care of this. People wouldn’t be working in this industry and there wouldn’t be so many people still commanding good comp packages even in this day. So, for those that got the short end of the stick, well sorry. Welcome to life.

I’m done. You and CAR win.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=SK in CV][quote=bearishgurl]The laid-off worker is free to look for another job from day one. If they got any “severance” at all, it must be reported to EDD. The worker is still eligible for 26 weeks of UI from the week after the severance pay ends.

Let’s just say these laid-off Disney IT employees were making an average of $80K annually. That’s $20K gross for 3 months FT work plus a $2K “bonus” (~$22K) IF their cheaper foreign replacement “gets it” after 3 months (MINUS ALL PAYROLL TAXES)! It’s still not worth it . . . that is if FL has a ~$450 cap on their weekly UI paymen

[/quote]

Severance pay doesn’t affect UI benefits in California, irrespective of whether it’s paid in a lump sum or periodically. It does, however, in Florida, where maximum weekly benefits are $275/wk, and are reduced by periodic severance.[/quote]Thanks, SK. That explains why these FL workers ended up cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

Disney deserves to have EEOC investigation(s) dropped in their lap as well as being served with a class action suit for discrimination and skirting the H1b law (at least the “letter of the law”). I sure hope hiring their cheap, transplanted foreign labor was worth it for them.

I think I’ll go back to CAR’s first article and get that court case number so I can put yet another stick-note on the bottom of my computer monitor to follow :=0

[no_such_reality]

[quote=SK in CV][quote=bearishgurl]The laid-off worker is free to look for another job from day one. If they got any “severance” at all, it must be reported to EDD. The worker is still eligible for 26 weeks of UI from the week after the severance pay ends.

Let’s just say these laid-off Disney IT employees were making an average of $80K annually. That’s $20K gross for 3 months FT work plus a $2K “bonus” (~$22K) IF their cheaper foreign replacement “gets it” after 3 months (MINUS ALL PAYROLL TAXES)! It’s still not worth it . . . that is if FL has a ~$450 cap on their weekly UI paymen

[/quote]

Severance pay doesn’t affect UI benefits in California, irrespective of whether it’s paid in a lump sum or periodically. It does, however, in Florida, where maximum weekly benefits are $275/wk, and are reduced by periodic severance.[/quote]

I’ve shuffled many people through these processes, most of them simply due to M&A activity. The emps all take the deal because they immediately start looking for a job. Being employed and looking makes you employable.

Telling your employer to f— themselves because they outsourced or merge makes you close to untouchable as a hire. JIMHO.

I myself have been through it six times due to M&A.

[Anonymous]

[quote=CA renter]What flu posted has nothing at all to do with the issue being discussed.[/quote]

Of course not. It was just an article about immigrant labor that countered your baseless claim about immigrant labor. The claim you made without any citations while comically attacking me for not doing any research.

[quote]As already noted by other posters, farm workers are not paid nearly enough as it is,[/quote]

The topic of this thread is immigration and refugees, not fair labor wages. The OP story is about immigrant children specifically.

If you have reason to believe someone is not being paid a legal wage, contact the authorities. I’m sure some government employee will get right on it.

[quote]American workers are not willing to do that […][/quote]

Which means they aren’t being displaced.

[quote][…]we should not be striving to plumb the deepest depths of what workers are willing to accept.[/quote]

Whatever in hell that means.

[quote]And I wasn’t referring to BG’s comment as research.[/quote]

Oh, you were just thanking her for insulting me?

[quote]All you have to do is look at the demographic shifts in some key industries [I’ll give you a head start: construction, manufacturing, warehousing, trucking, food service (esp. cooks and fast-food workers), hospitality, child care, auto repair, etc.), check out the demographic changes, and then compare that to the jobs where pay hasn’t kept up with inflation.[/quote]

I looked at them and didn’t see anything that would suggest we should not have compassionate policies toward immigrants and refugees, particularly children.

What did you conclude from your extensive research?

[quote]Here’s a fairly recent story about Disney dumping their local talent in favor of immigrants.
[/quote]

People sue for just about anything these days. An unsettled lawsuit is your best example?

The job market is doing well. The Fed is reporting we are near full employment. Your job-stealing immigrant boogeyman doesn’t exist.

As usual, the progression of your arguments is like a dog chasing its tail: cute for a moment or two, but then quickly becomes annoying and sad.

[CA renter]

[quote=harvey][quote=CA renter]What flu posted has nothing at all to do with the issue being discussed.[/quote]

Of course not. It was just an article about immigrant labor that countered your baseless claim about immigrant labor. The claim you made without any citations while comically attacking me for not doing any research.

[quote]As already noted by other posters, farm workers are not paid nearly enough as it is,[/quote]

The topic of this thread is immigration and refugees, not fair labor wages. The OP story is about immigrant children specifically.

If you have reason to believe someone is not being paid a legal wage, contact the authorities. I’m sure some government employee will get right on it.

[quote]American workers are not willing to do that […][/quote]

Which means they aren’t being displaced.

[quote][…]we should not be striving to plumb the deepest depths of what workers are willing to accept.[/quote]

Whatever in hell that means.

[quote]And I wasn’t referring to BG’s comment as research.[/quote]

Oh, you were just thanking her for insulting me?

[quote]All you have to do is look at the demographic shifts in some key industries [I’ll give you a head start: construction, manufacturing, warehousing, trucking, food service (esp. cooks and fast-food workers), hospitality, child care, auto repair, etc.), check out the demographic changes, and then compare that to the jobs where pay hasn’t kept up with inflation.[/quote]

I looked at them and didn’t see anything that would suggest we should not have compassionate policies toward immigrants and refugees, particularly children.

What did you conclude from your extensive research?

[quote]Here’s a fairly recent story about Disney dumping their local talent in favor of immigrants.
[/quote]

People sue for just about anything these days. An unsettled lawsuit is your best example?

The job market is doing well. The Fed is reporting we are near full employment. Your job-stealing immigrant boogeyman doesn’t exist.

As usual, the progression of your arguments is like a dog chasing its tail: cute for a moment or two, but then quickly becomes annoying and sad.[/quote]

As usual, your lack of reading comprehension skills rears its ugly head. This thread, like many others, has changed from the original topic. We are now on the topic of American workers being displaced. This was based on flu’s more recent link to an article about the “less educated” being most opposed to these demographic and cultural shifts.

You still haven’t done any research, Pri, and your statements make that painfully obvious. Try again.

[CA renter]

[quote=FlyerInHi]BG and CArenter, does anything you say justify the shameful demonstrations against refugees, children and adults?[/quote]

The difference between you and me is that you prefer to focus on the symptoms, whereas I prefer to focus on the causes of these problems.

None of the behaviors and beliefs that you are focused on exist in a vacuum. Our elected officials and the corporate/financial interests who control them (and Hillary’s hands are covered in blood) have caused the conditions for these refugees to exist in the first place.

I was opposed to the wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc., and have protested and spoken out against them from the earliest days. How about you?

These refugees shouldn’t exist, and Hillary Clinton is an extension of the policies that caused these atrocities in the fist place. Are you voting for her this election? I’m not (no, I’m not voting for Trump, either).

We need to stay the hell out of other people’s countries and we need to stop thinking that we have a right to their resources (yes, I believe that the people who were born and raised in a region, and who have ancestral ties to a region, have rights that people from other countries don’t have). We do not own the oil under their land, and we do not own the right to mine minerals or other natural resources from land (or water) belonging to others who already live there. We also don’t have the right to exploit their people for their labor just because they are desperate.

We owe these refugees safe zones in their own countries, and we have the obligation to pay whatever it takes to have a sufficient enough military presence to protect them within these zones. They have the right to live in their own countries; that’s what they prefer, and that’s what we owe them, no matter the expense. The people who got us into these wars (and the idiotic voters who voted for the corporate-controlled puppets who caused these wars) need to pay for what they have done.

It’s easy to cost-shift the burden to those who are most vulnerable and least able to bear these costs — being displaced from their occupations or neighborhoods, being pushed down the political/social totem pole, etc. Again, it’s easy to bathe in self-righteousness when you’re not the one paying the price. It’s time for those who make these decisions, and who most benefit from them, to make the greatest sacrifices.

[Author]

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