Plan B Forum

Pink Slips at Disney. But First, Training Foreign Replacements.

By JULIA PRESTONJUNE 3, 2015
Photo
The Team Disney building in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., which houses most of the company’s technology operations. Credit Brian Blanco for The New York Times

ORLANDO, Fla. — The employees who kept the data systems humming in the vast Walt Disney fantasy fief did not suspect trouble when they were suddenly summoned to meetings with their boss.

While families rode the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and searched for Nemo on clamobiles in the theme parks, these workers monitored computers in industrial buildings nearby, making sure millions of Walt Disney World ticket sales, store purchases and hotel reservations went through without a hitch. Some were performing so well that they thought they had been called in for bonuses.

Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.

“I just couldn’t believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and take over our jobs exactly,” said one former worker, an American in his 40s who remains unemployed since his last day at Disney on Jan. 30. “It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your job. I still can’t grasp it.”

Disney executives said that the layoffs were part of a reorganization, and that the company opened more positions than it eliminated.

But 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. These visas are at the center of a fierce debate in Congress over whether they complement American workers or displace them.

According to federal guidelines, the visas are intended for foreigners with advanced science or computer skills to fill discrete positions when American workers with those skills cannot be found. Their use, the guidelines say, should not “adversely affect the wages and working conditions” of Americans. Because of legal loopholes, however, in practice, companies do not have to recruit American workers first or guarantee that Americans will not be displaced. ... " <see link>

Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.

Australian-trained nurses and midwives are being locked out of the workforce as hospitals hire thousands of skilled migrants every year, a new report reveals.

The national union representing 240,000 nurses, midwives and assistants warned the federal government that thousands of graduates missed out on jobs because healthcare employers were signing up foreign workers with temporary 457 visas.

As many as 33 per cent of nurses and midwives who finished their training last year were jobless and many were employed as casuals and wanted more hours, said the report.

Only 15 per cent of graduate respondents had found secure employment in the industry.


The findings underpinned the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation's submission to a Senate inquiry into working visa schemes, raising concerns about employers accessing about 3000 migrant workers a year while graduates were knocked back.

The federation's federal secretary, Lee Thomas, said a growing number of nurse and midwife graduates were walking away from the profession because they could not find work.

"This is not only throwing away public investment in their training and eduction, but it's also contributing to the country's overall increasing shortage of nurses," Ms Thomas said.

One part of the report, a survey conducted over 10 days in February, included responses from more than 400 nurses and midwives who graduated last year.

Based on the findings, the federation said it "conservatively estimates" that 800 graduates in Victoria alone could not get a job.

More than 280 graduates in South Australia and 400 in Western Australia had also not found work, said the union's analysis, while just 600 out of 2500 graduates from Queensland were employed in the industry.

Graduates told of spending months unsuccessfully applying for dozens of positions in urban and remote areas after finishing their courses.


"I am very disheartened with the prospects of future employment and feel as if I have been lied to when told, 'Oh, you're a nurse, you can get a job anywhere' ... this statement would be true if I had three-plus years experience," said one graduate.

"I am all for a multicultural environment, but not when it begins to affect such a large proportion of the local nursing workforce."

The federation and the Australian Council of Trade Unions were pressing the government to tighten laws that regulated the use of 457 visas and to halt any plans to expand the scheme until the Senate reported back on its findings.

Employers in the hospitals and healthcare sector said foreign nurses made up 25 per cent of all new entrants in the nation's nursing workforce each year, and were needed for specialist roles not suitable for new graduates.

Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association chief Alison Verhoeven said about 20 per cent of nurses in the workforce were nearing retirement age and demand for graduates would pick up, especially in mental health and aged care.

"While some newly graduated nurses are currently unable to find employment, we need enough people studying nursing to meet likely future demand," she said.

Ms Verhoeven said the federal Department of Health must undertake rigorous workforce modelling after the recent closure of a national reporting agency that informed governments on highly complicated health workforce policies.

"It is important for the government to ensure that immigration numbers are well-balanced against nursing graduate numbers," Ms Verhoeven said.

ACTU secretary Ged Kearney, formerly a registered nurse, said overseas workers on temporary visas were being hired ahead of graduates "because they can't speak up".

"They live and work under the threat of deportation," she said.

"Student nurses and midwives complete their degrees, they are often very passionate about this chosen career path, and yet when they try to find work, employers won't give them a chance ... they are told they lack experience, which is outrageous considering they are graduates."