Here's one for the White House suggestion box: President Obama -- Be careful about where you seek job creation advice.
This week marked the second meeting of the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, a 26-person panel of business and labor leaders appointed by President Obama to generate a national strategy for job creation.
Whether or not the Jobs Council can truly help fix America's job crisis, it's too soon to know, but there's ample reason to be skeptical.
"Good for Obama's jobs council, good for America?" was the question posed by The Washington Post, which went on to note that five of the companies with executives on the Council -- General Electric, Citigroup, Intel, Procter & Gamble and DuPont -- generate the bulk of their revenues overseas.
And the GOP blasted the President for his choice of venue -- a manufacturer of energy-efficient lighting in Durham, NC, called Cree, Inc. President Obama praised Cree for "putting people back to work in a field that has the potential to create an untold number of new jobs and new businesses right here in America."
But the Republican National Committee issued a release saying that Cree -- which received a $39 million tax credit in stimulus funds -- has more than half of its 5,000-person workforce in China. The GOP also points to industry press reports that during the grand opening celebration of the company's first Chinese plant in December, the CEO promised more expansion in China and said, "Cree management never runs this company as a U.S. company."
These are not the only signs that the interests of the President's Council are not necessarily shared by America's workforce. Consider, for instance, the high-tech job training plan announced by President Obama with great fanfare on Monday. "Today, with the leadership of the Jobs Council, we're announcing an all-hands-on-deck strategy to train 10,000 new American engineers every year." The reason, he explained:
Right now, there are more than four job-seekers for every job opening in America. But when it comes to science and high-tech fields, the opposite is true. The businesses represented here tell me they're having a hard time finding high-skilled workers to fill their job openings. And that's because today only 14 percent of all undergraduate students enroll in what we call the STEM subjects -- science, technology, engineering, and math.
That may be true, but recent research shows the number of STEM students graduating each year from U.S. universities far exceeds the number of new jobs.
And while U.S. corporations decry the shortage of tech talent -- industry data indicates there are upwards of 200,000 tech workers unemployed across the country today. Even with this glut of job-seekers, companies say the talent shortage is SO acute that they are forced to import foreign labor from overseas.
Over the past year, Dan Rather Reports has done a series of programs about the foreign labor force brought here by a vast array of U.S companies ostensibly to do jobs they can't find Americans to fill. Using an alphabet soup of special temporary work visas, employers have imported millions of foreign workers -- from hotel housekeepers to farm laborers to software engineers. It's part of the federal guest worker system and it's perfectly legal.
Most people --- including guest workers -- might assume that if a U.S. company decides to sponsor a person to come here on work visa, they must have tried to hire an American first. But that's not the necessarily the case. According to U.S. Department of Labor, a guest worker visa known as H-1B for "specialty occupations" especially tech workers -- may be issued "even when a qualified U.S. worker wants the job." In fact, the bulletin notes, "A U.S. worker can be displaced from the job in favor of the foreign worker."
Guest workers have little leverage to complain about wages or working conditions because unlike citizens or legal permanent residents, they are dependent on their employers not just for their paycheck, but also for their immigration status. If they lose their job, they may lose their right to be in the country. Despite laws requiring H-1B employers to pay guest workers what's known as a "prevailing wage," the cost savings offered by visa-holders are an open secret in the tech world. (See, for example, this report in last week's Washington Post.)
The federal government doesn't have any official counts of the guest worker population. Estimates put the current number of H-1B visa holders alone somewhere between 600,000 and 1,000,000. In recent years, U.S. corporations have been using an ever-proliferating array of temporary visas to import foreign labor --including visitor visas, which as we reported in a recent Dan Rather Reports, are not supposed to be used for any purpose involving gainful employment.
In Washington, business leaders and lawmakers have been pushing to ease visa rules and caps. And across the country, high-tech workers -- both foreign and domestic -- are seeing the notion of job security give way to a brutal contest of survival. Getting displaced, undercut and swapped out by fresher, better, cheaper talent has simply become the reality of today's job market.
Dan Rather Reports took a close look at the trickle-down effects in this week's program, "No Thanks for Everything." It was four personal stories from four tech workers, in their own words. (click here for more from the show). Even after years watching U.S. companies moving more and more "jobs of the future" overseas, these workers never imagined that they might be displaced by foreign workers in their own hometowns.
Now in the name of American competitiveness, the President's Jobs Council is not only calling for high-tech job training, but also for visa reforms -- reforms that would not close loophole or staunch misuse, but increase the flow of foreign arrivals.
It's no wonder that so many people once living the American dream are feeling shell-shocked -- sucker-punched by a job market that their own government has rigged against them. And consider this. Cree, the North Carolina company that the President chose as the backdrop for his job initiative, has filed dozens of H-1B applications for foreign workers in recent years, according to U.S. Dept. of Labor records.
Dan Rather Reports airs Tuesdays on HDNet at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET. This show is also available on iTunes.
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American IT worker tragic stories
//www.chalanachithram.com/discus/messages/125/147605.html?1308509873
"The so called "American jobs" are not really American jobs..A job at Microsoft will be an American job only if Microsoft sells its products only in the USA. There is nothing wrong if global companies hire global citizens.. "
"Super answer brother ,,, very nice way to put, don't sell the products to other countries if you don't want to hire outsiders"
quit whining and start creating "real" american jobs
The report, suggests that the country could miss out on 19,500 doctors and nurses, 62,000 teachers and 1,500 plumbers, if young people are unable to fulfill their career aspirations. It further offers that:
‘up to 93,000 potential entrepreneurs, 16,000 mechanics and 31,000 social workers could also be lost if youngsters cannot pursue their ambitions. Youth unemployment already costs the state £3.5m each day in Jobseekers’ Allowance.( All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc )
In contrast to this recent headlines announcing ‘University Crisis: threatening 1000′s of job losses in campuses as FE establishments cut in line with reduced funding. The resultant course cuts will drive entrance grades higher and reduce course places by 300,000 at a time when the UK predict its highest level of applicants ever this Autumn.
What both UK articles elude to is a lack of understanding between the supply and demand between what each country’s Public and Private Sector needs (Demand) and the available resources in terms of qualifications and skills, (Supply). Industry has been finessing this model (Supply Chain Management ) for decades, constantly striving to ensure the right resources are in the right place at the right time.
WYGU our new Careers social network, www.wygu.com, has the ability to influence this
This legislation was not in the interest of the citizens of the USA, so why did congress create these laws?
Answer: Because most of the importer/distribuitor/retailer's paid lobbyists have probably spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on wine, food, women, song, corporate jobs for their (unemployable) children/wives/girlfriends of the congressmen (and their aids), vacations, cash, pre-paid sexual services, and campaign contributions to entice (bribe) our congressmen to pass this "Free Trade" legislation" that allowed all companies to take advantage of the lower labor and environmental costs available in foreign countries.
Bribes are illegal, but most of the wine, food, women, song, corporate jobs for their (unemployable) children/wives/girlfriends of the congressmen (and their aids), vacations, cash, pre-paid sexual services, and campaign contributions to entice and influence (bribe) our congressmen is apparently legal.
The huge number of these congressional aids on the Federal Payroll also increases the costs of lobbying because the lobbyists not only have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on wine, food, women, song, corporate jobs for their (unemployable) children/wives/girlfriends of the congressmen, vacations, cash, prepaid sexual services, and campaign contributions to entice (bribe) our congressmen to create whatever legislation that the clients of the lobbyists want to be created, but the lobbyists must now spend similar amounts on each of the congressmen's aids if the lobbyists want whatever legislation their clients want to be created.
How do you think that all of the "Free Trade" legislation that caused most of the US jobs to relocate to overseas locations was created?
We should all blame ourselves for electing both Republican and Democrat US Congressmen and Senators that created all of the "FREE TRADE" legislation created during the past 20 years that legally allowed and ECONOMICALLY REQUIRED that almost all non-government jobs in the USA be moved to foreign nations by removing the import tariffs that protected the USA jobs (or actually the pay scales) of the US worker!
I guess another few more million unemployed US citizens did not matter to President Obama when he negotiated his proposed South Korean Free Trade Agreement (SKFTA)!
Thank you Bill Clinton for signing NAFTA into law which caused sucking of our US jobs to Mexico. NAFTA was the first of many treaties created by many subsequent the "FREE TRADE" legislation actions! Why did Clinton sign NAFTA into law? He did not have to!
Without Bill Clinton signing NAFTA into law, many US jobs for US citizens would have stayed in the USA.
George Bush and most all of the elected Republican and Democratic US Congressmen and Senators were also in favor of NAFTA, so I guess the US workers were just sold out for lower cost consumer products.
NAFTA was the first of many treaties created by many subsequent the "FREE TRADE" legislation actions!
I guess the US workers were just sold out for lower cost consumer products.
We will all be unemployed if the EPA causes US businesses to ship all of our US jobs to foreign nations.
Wait a sec.
The fed issues these visas and, from what I got from the article, the visa status is dependent on the employment status of the "guest worker".
How the he!! can these visas be issued if (1) even the issuing agency doesn't know how many are issued and (2) if the issuing agency don't know how many are issued, how do they know that the holders are still working for the company that originally sponsored them?
And all this time I thought that our major immigration problem was low pay labor.
Thank you, Mr. Rather, for showing me that our immigration policies are REALLY $crewed up.
http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-giving-away-american-jobs
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Clearly this article is not talking about Mexican migrant workers doing farm work - which many Americans could get if they decided that was the life they wanted and live with the paycheck they'd receive. Companies looking for STEM employees aren't giving out Visa's to Mexicans who "work in fields"
The author confuses the article by discussing STEM jobs - and then talking about companies who are moving their operations overseas to take advantage of cheap labor. Which many Americans think is beneath them. Unfortunately - the issue of STEM labor is a real problem - and noticeable here in NYC in many cases. Is Obama's choice of participants a bit off? Sure - but who did the author prefer he invited? This problem is not new. Free education for Illegal children is a real issue that needs attention - you are right. Some of your other ideas are great - even if neither party will feel free to act on them.