Report: AT&T Laying Off Americans, Forcing Them to Train Their Foreign Replacements
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AT&T is reportedly laying off thousands of American workers after forcing them to train their foreign replacements who have been imported through the H-1B visa program.
Every year, more than 100,000 foreign workers are brought to the U.S. on the H-1B visa and are allowed to stay for up to six years. There are about 650,000 H-1B visa foreign workers in the U.S. at any given moment. Americans are often laid off in the process and forced to train their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News.
More than 85,000 Americans annually potentially lose their jobs to foreign labor through the H-1B visa program. Despite claims by the big business lobby, American workers who have been replaced by H-1B foreign workers say there is no shortage of talented and qualified citizens for high-paying, white-collar jobs.
In a new report by Axios, current and former AT&T employees said they are being laid off after being forced to train their H-1B foreign replacements:
AT&T is poised to send thousands into the new year hunting for new jobs after assigning them to train their own foreign replacements, according to conversations with current and former workers and documents obtained by Axios. [Emphasis added]Many have worked for the company for over a decade. They aren’t being offered severance or early retirement, and may not easily find a comparable job elsewhere with similar pay. [Emphasis added]
AT&T spokesperson Jim Kimberly told Breitbart News that employees are being helped to find other jobs inside the company.
“We are continuously working to be more efficient in our operations,” Kimberly said. “To the extent possible, we’re managing this staff adjustment through attrition and are helping employees find other positions within the company.”
Sara Blackwell, who represents Americans and green card holders who have been forced out of their U.S. jobs by H-1B foreign replacements, told Axios that the victims of the visa program are “tired of waiting for President Trump to do something on this issue.”
“They’ve gone from great hope in President Trump’s administration, to great discouragement,” Blackwell said. Previously, Blackwell and a group of laid-off Americans — replaced by H-1B visa workers — told Breitbart News that their fight for major reforms has stalled in the Trump administration after spending two years working with the 2016 campaign to get out the vote.
Blackwell, though, told Axios she had met with White House officials this month.
Last year, U.S. businesses and corporations attempted to outsource nearly 420,000 American jobs to foreigners through the H-1B visa program — a number that outpaces the population of Tampa, Florida.
As Breitbart News previously reported, more than 2.7 million H-1B foreign workers have been approved to come to the U.S. to take American jobs between 2007 and 2017. During that same period, businesses tried to outsource almost 3.5 million American jobs to foreign workers instead of hiring Americans.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
"At the same
time, the tax cuts for big business are fueling the federal deficit, which will
be used by both Democratic and Republican politicians to call for further cuts
in social spending. The February monthly federal deficit hit an all-time high
of $234 billion this year, as a result of a 20 percent drop in corporate tax
revenue. The deficit for the first half of 2019 is projected at $961 billion,
and the deficit for the fiscal year ending September 30 is expected to reach
$1.1 trillion, as bad as the deficits posted in the immediate aftermath of the
2008 financial crash."
US Tax Day 2019: Sixty giant corporations pay
zero income tax
Dozens of giant US
corporations, including 60 of the Fortune 500, used deductions, credits and
other tax loopholes to avoid paying any federal income tax for 2018, according
to an analysis issued by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).
The report was published April 11, just in time for the April 15 deadline for
most American working people to file their tax returns.
The 60 companies in the
Fortune 500 who paid no federal income tax had net incomes just from US
operations of nearly $80 billion ($79,025,000,000, to be exact). They include
such household names as Amazon, Chevron, Deere, Delta Air Lines, General
Motors, Goodyear, Halliburton, Honeywell, IBM, Eli Lilly, Netflix, Occidental
Petroleum, Prudential Financial and US Steel.
Meanwhile, millions of
moderate-income families are finding that their income taxes have either
increased or their expected tax refunds have evaporated because of restrictions
on the itemization of tax deductions, the imposition of a $10,000 cap on state
and local tax deductions and a cut in the mortgage interest deduction.
Nearly all of the 60
companies that paid no taxes qualified to receive a refund from the US
Treasury, although most will not collect a check, instead using the credit to
offset future taxes. But whatever the bookkeeping process, American taxpayers
are effectively paying money to them, despite their vast profits.
The biggest refunds include those going to Prudential, $346 million (added to
its $1.44 billion in profits); Duke Energy, a whopping $647 million (added to
$3.02 billion in profits); and Deere, $268 million (added to $2.15 billion in
profits).
Among the report’s most
outrageous findings:
Amazon more than
zeroed-out its tax bill on $10.8 billion in profits, making use of accelerated
depreciation deductions on equipment as well as favorable tax treatment of
stock-based compensation for executives like CEO Jeff Bezos, the wealthiest man
in the world. The stock compensation deduction alone was worth $1 billion.
Amazon will actually show a credit of $129 million from the US Treasury, not
paying one cent in federal income taxes.
IBM is another corporate
giant that has gamed the tax system by shifting earnings to its foreign
operations to escape US taxation. The company reported worldwide profits of
$8.7 billion, but only $500 million in the United States. It will reap a $342
million credit from the Treasury.
Delta Airlines accumulated $17.1
billion in federal pre-tax net losses as of 2010, partly as a consequence of a
protracted crisis of the airline industry, partly as a result of the 2008 Wall
Street crash. It has used these losses as well as the accelerated depreciation
credit for purchase of new planes to “dramatically reduce their tax rates,”
according to the ITEP report, receiving a credit of $187 million in 2018
despite net profits of more than $5 billion. According to Delta’s chief
financial officer, the actual tax rate the company expects to pay going forward
is between 10 and 13 percent, far below what a typical Delta worker pays on his
or her income.
EOG Resources, a renamed remnant of
Enron, perpetrator of the biggest corporate fraud in American history, can
collect $304 million from US taxpayers on top of $4.07 billion in profits.
For one company, the
federal tax refund would actually exceed net profits. Gannett made
a $7 million profit, while showing an additional $11 million credit from the
Treasury, giving the newspaper publishing giant an effective tax rate of
negative 164 percent.
IBM’s tax rate was a
negative 68 percent, while software maker Activision Blizzard and construction
company AECOM Technology both posted effective tax rates of negative 51
percent.
Sixteen of the 60
companies made more than a billion dollars in net income on their US
operations, to say nothing of foreign subsidiaries. Oil and gas producers and
utilities comprised more than one-third of the total, led by Chevron and
Occidental among the oil companies, and DTE Energy, American Electric Power,
Duke Energy and Dominion Resources among the utilities.
The 60 companies
profited enormously because the Trump tax cut bill cut the basic rate for
corporations from 35 percent to 21 percent, while not eliminating the loopholes
they had previously used to keep their taxes low. They had the best of both
worlds, paying lower rates while still enjoying loopholes.
Overall, according to
the Joint Committee on Taxation, an arm of Congress, the cut in the corporate
tax rate alone will pump $1.35 trillion into the pockets of the corporations
over the next 10 years. For this year alone, corporate taxes have been cut by
31 percent.
For the 60 companies in
the ITEP report, “Instead of paying $16.4 billion in taxes, as the new 21
percent corporate tax rate requires, these companies enjoyed a net corporate
tax rebate of $4.3 billion, blowing a $20.7 billion hole in the federal budget
last year.”
This figure by itself
is an irrefutable answer to all the bogus claims—made to workers in every part
of the United States—that there is “no money” to pay for needed social
programs, for wage and benefit increases, or to hire additional workers to
reduce overwork and understaffing. The $20.7 billion would pay for a $7,000
bonus to every public school teacher in America.
The bonanza that these
60 corporations are enjoying is three times the amount that Trump proposes to
cut from the budget of the Department of Education. It is 10 times the total
amount budgeted for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which provides services for
more than 2 million Native Americans. It is nearly 20 times the budget of the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which conducts workplace safety
inspections.
The ITEP report, issued
by a group with close ties to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a
liberal Washington think tank, warns of the explosive political consequences of
the corporate plundering of the Treasury. “The specter of big corporations
avoiding all income taxes on billions in profits sends a strong and corrosive
signal to Americans: that the tax system is stacked against them, in favor of
corporations and the wealthiest Americans,” the report says.
At the same time, the
tax cuts for big business are fueling the federal deficit, which will be used
by both Democratic and Republican politicians to call for further cuts in
social spending. The February monthly federal deficit hit an all-time high of
$234 billion this year, as a result of a 20 percent drop in corporate tax
revenue. The deficit for the first half of 2019 is projected at $961 billion,
and the deficit for the fiscal year ending September 30 is expected to reach
$1.1 trillion, as bad as the deficits posted in the immediate aftermath of the
2008 financial crash.
The number of U.S. companies paying zero federal taxes DOUBLED when
Trump's tax plan took effect in 2018
·
60 large companies managed to escape 2018
taxes under Trump's new plan
·
Many of those corporations actually received
tax rebates totaling $4.3 billion
·
The businesses include: Amazon, Netflix,
Chevron, Delta Airlines, JetBlue Airways, IBM, General Motors, Goodyear, Eli
Lilly and United States Steel
·
The result is a $20.7 billion budget hole
that is adding to America's federal debt
President Donald
Trump's tax policy doubled the number of highly
profitable companies that were able to avoid paying any federal taxes in 2018,
according to a new report.
Amazon, Netflix,
Chevron, Delta Airlines, IBM, General Motors and Eli Lilly were among those who
managed to escape taxes for last year, according to the study by the
Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
'Instead
of paying $16.4 billion in taxes, as the new 21 percent corporate tax rate
requires, these companies enjoyed a net corporate tax rebate of $4.3 billion, blowing
a $20.7 billion hole in the federal budget last year,' the report says.
The
Washington, D.C. think tank analyzed America's 560 largest publicly held
companies, finding that 60 of them paid nothing in taxes for last year – double
the average of roughly 30 companies that got away scot-free each year from
2008-2015.
Republicans
in Congress pushed through the tax law signed by Trump in 2017, and its
policies favoring the richest Americans and most valuable U.S. companies took
effect in 2018.
Scroll down for the full list of companies and rebates
·
The
change cut the tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent and allowed companies to
take advantage of deductions, tax credits and rebates. That change alone is
projected to save corporations $1.35 trillion over the next decade, according
to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
'We
know that there's this pretty glaring contrast between what the proponents of
this tax law promised back in 2017 and what it's delivering now,' lead
author Matthew Gardner told DailyMail.com.
'The whole
argument was that the reason companies were avoiding taxes is because tax rates
are so high,' he added. 'What we're seeing is that isn't coming to pass.'
Collectively, the 60 companies that avoided
all taxes last year managed 'to zero out their federal income taxes on $79
billion in U.S. pretax income,' according to the study, which was first
reported on by the Center for Public Integrity and
NBC News.
For
example, the John Deer farm equipment company earned $2.15 billion before
taxes, yet owed no U.S. taxes and used deductions and credits to extract $268
million from the federal government.
Nationally,
corporate tax revenues decreased 31 percent in 2018 to $204 billion.
'This
was a more precipitous decline than in any year of normal economic growth in
U.S. history,' wrote Gardner, a senior fellow for the Institute on Taxation and
Economic Policy, in the report.
We know that there's this pretty
glaring contrast between what the proponents of this tax law promised back in
2017 and what it's delivering now.
-Matthew Gardner, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy
Trump
had said that the corporate tax cut would pay for itself by sparking a business
boom that would create more jobs, thus generating growing income tax revenues
for the nation.
That
reality hasn't emerged. Instead the nation's budget deficit is higher than it's
ever been in this nation's history.
That's
despite Trump's campaign promise to eliminate the $19.9 trillion national debt
in eight years. So far it has ballooned 41.8 percent in the first four months
of the 2019 fiscal year (which runs October 1 – September 30.
The
Government Accountability Office announced in April that the 'federal
government's current fiscal path … (is) unsustainable.'
Presidential
economic adviser Larry Kudlow has said that 'economic growth' has 'paid for a
good chunk' of the tax cuts, and that the budget's outlook is 'not as bad' as
it's perceived.
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·
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