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As reported in the original NYT article, the 70 new Disney IT jobs are actual Disney employees, not the controversial outsourced contractors (though the new Dis

As reported in the original NYT article, the 70 new Disney IT jobs are actual Disney employees, not the controversial outsourced contractors (though the new Disney employees may or may not include H1-B workers). The eliminated Disney IT jobs were outsourced to a contracting shop. The contracting shop hired H1-B workers to perform the outsourced work. The net overall effect appears to be that H1B workers replaced Disney IT workers. If you look at the corporate level: Disney didn't hire any H1-B workers as part of the restructuring, ergo Disney didn't replace existing jobs with H1-B workers. The contracting firm didn't fire anyone, ergo the contracting firm didn't replace existing jobs with H1-B workers. But apparently nobody is accountable for the overall effect.

tjradcliffe 11y ago
Disney and the contracting firm are both corporations. Corporations do not exist in free markets. They are a product of nothing but legislative intervention in the free market in the form of the Companies Act (the reformed version of the 1850's) and its descendents around the world. Without this interference in the marketplace, corporations in the modern sense cannot and did not exist. The only reason this kind of situation can arise is because of the nature of corporate relationships, in which the actions of individuals are hidden behind the collective mask of corporate ownership. Otherwise, it would be, "Jane fired Fred from America and replaced him with Amir from India" and the locus of effect would be undeniable. It follows from this that the lawmakers who intervened in the free market to create the corporate form of collective organization are--or ought to be--held responsible for the overall effect of corporate behaviour. The likely corrective action, as our Libertarian friends tell us, is further intervention in the free market in the form of regulation on this sort of behaviour.
KeithBarrett 11y ago
Yes; in a way it's laundering by placing a 3rd party in between to achieve the outcome, but the contracting shop could not complete or offer such savings without leveraging the H1-B system. Remember you can't replace employees with contractors, and outsourcing is suppose to be taking your service and transitioning it to specialized experts, so leveraging outsourcing to do layoffs, to cheap staff new to the field and training them is walking a line. Also instead of repositioning your staff into the new 70+ positions, forcing them to leave then re-submit is poor leadership, and it forced them to renegotiate new lower salaries.

tjradcliffe 11y ago

Disney and the contracting firm are both corporations. Corporations do not exist in free markets. They are a product of nothing but legislative intervention in the free market in the form of the Companies Act (the reformed version of the 1850's) and its descendents around the world. Without this interference in the marketplace, corporations in the modern sense cannot and did not exist. The only reason this kind of situation can arise is because of the nature of corporate relationships, in which the actions of individuals are hidden behind the collective mask of corporate ownership. Otherwise, it would be, "Jane fired Fred from America and replaced him with Amir from India" and the locus of effect would be undeniable. It follows from this that the lawmakers who intervened in the free market to create the corporate form of collective organization are--or ought to be--held responsible for the overall effect of corporate behaviour. The likely corrective action, as our Libertarian friends tell us, is further intervention in the free market in the form of regulation on this sort of behaviour.

KeithBarrett 11y ago

Yes; in a way it's laundering by placing a 3rd party in between to achieve the outcome, but the contracting shop could not complete or offer such savings without leveraging the H1-B system. Remember you can't replace employees with contractors, and outsourcing is suppose to be taking your service and transitioning it to specialized experts, so leveraging outsourcing to do layoffs, to cheap staff new to the field and training them is walking a line. Also instead of repositioning your staff into the new 70+ positions, forcing them to leave then re-submit is poor leadership, and it forced them to renegotiate new lower salaries.