Research shows U.S. firms want cheap, exploitable labor rather than skilled STEM professionals

Along with temporary deportation relief for millions, President Obama’s executive action will increase the number of U.S. college graduates from abroad who can temporarily be hired by U.S. corporations. That hasn’t satisfied tech companies and trade groups, which contend more green cards or guest worker visas are needed to keep tech industries growing because of a shortage of qualified American workers. But scholars say there’s a problem with that argument: The tech worker shortage doesn’t actually exist.

“There’s no evidence of any way, shape, or form that there’s a shortage in the conventional sense,” says Hal Salzman, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University. “They may not be able to find them at the price they want. But I’m not sure that qualifies as a shortage, any more than my not being able to find a half-priced TV.”

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The real issue, say Salzman and others, is the industry’s desire for lower-wage, more-exploitable guest workers, not a lack of available American staff. “It seems pretty clear that the industry just wants lower-cost labor,” Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote in an e-mail. A 2011 review by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the H-1B visa program, which is what industry groups are lobbying to expand, had “fragmented and restricted” oversight that weakened its ostensible labor standards. “Many in the tech industry are using it for cheaper, indentured labor,” says Rochester Institute of Technology public policy associate professor Ron Hira, an EPI research associate and co-author of the book Outsourcing America.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-24/the-tech-worker-shortage-doesnt-really-exist

Surprised?

Ben_Reilly wrote:
Along with temporary deportation relief for millions, President Obama’s executive action will increase the number of U.S. college graduates from abroad who can temporarily be hired by U.S. corporations. That hasn’t satisfied tech companies and trade groups, which contend more green cards or guest worker visas are needed to keep tech industries growing because of a shortage of qualified American workers. But scholars say there’s a problem with that argument: The tech worker shortage doesn’t actually exist.

“There’s no evidence of any way, shape, or form that there’s a shortage in the conventional sense,” says Hal Salzman, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University. “They may not be able to find them at the price they want. But I’m not sure that qualifies as a shortage, any more than my not being able to find a half-priced TV.”

OF COURSE it doesn't exist !!!

NEVER has, never will..

Twenty-plus years ago, the Tech'/IT industries were predicting that there would be a shortfall of "ten thousands" IT professionals in Oz, and more than 200 thousand in the USA, during the 1990s ~ however, examinations of job advertisements and hiring records from the late-'80s through to the early 'noughties' shows that there never was any such greatly increased demand !

INSTEAD, what the Western world in general has experienced was that the technology and IT sectors grew pretty much at the same rate as other increasing employment sectors, such as retail, health and personal services..

AND AT the same time, over half of the global increase in the numbers of computer programmers, technologists and engineers has occurred in ONE single country ~ India...        

The real issue, say Salzman and others, is the industry’s desire for lower-wage, more-exploitable guest workers, not a lack of available American staff. “It seems pretty clear that the industry just wants lower-cost labor,” Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote in an e-mail. A 2011 review by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the H-1B visa program, which is what industry groups are lobbying to expand, had “fragmented and restricted” oversight that weakened its ostensible labor standards. “Many in the tech industry are using it for cheaper, indentured labor,” says Rochester Institute of Technology public policy associate professor Ron Hira, an EPI research associate and co-author of the book Outsourcing America.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-24/the-tech-worker-shortage-doesnt-really-exist

Surprised?

NO SURPRISES there at all..

AS I've written on several threads over recent months, the widespread misuse and overuse of special needs/worker shortage visas has been abused by greedy bosses and companies aiming to drive their workers' wages and salaries down...
Preferably to Third World levels..      

Too true, LW -- and yet especially here, though I know you get it there too, these corporations are supposed to be the good guys, the hard-working job-creators

YEAH....     Jobs !!!  Jobs!!  Jobs!
ALWAYS the corporations use "more jobs" as their common mantra.
ESPECIALLY the big mining and agribusiness concerns..

UNFORTUNATELY, over 90% of the "new jobs" that the big multinationals are creating nowadays are in S.E. Asia, China, Northern and Western Africa and Eastern Europe...      

WITH special visa contract labourers being increasingly used to undercut existing conditions and pay rates back in their home markets..

MEANWHILE, many poorly managed companies these days no longer even bother considering where their future customers are coming from, as they "race each other to the bottom" in their endless race for ever increasing dividends at the cost of stable and viable business models.      

THE USA used to be the world's #1 manufacturer and "innovator". NOT any more..
Over the last decade they have gradually slipped down the rankings as the US_listed "corporations" happily assisted China, India, Brazil and Mexico to overtake them ~ as more and more jobs from America, Canada, Germany, France, Japan, Britain and Australia have been "off shored" into 3rd World factories...