Friday, July 3, 2020

JOBLESS IN HIGH TECH? DON'T GO TO CISCO - "Many of the Indians are training in the U.S. to take Americans’ jobs back to India, and many others are working in exchange for the promise of employer-provided green cards."



The caste culture is now being brought into U.S. workplaces by Fortune 500 executives who allow Indian-born lower managers to act as ethnic power brokers in exchange for meeting corporate deadlines and payroll targets.

India's illegal-immigration population in the US grows almost 70% in 8 years, to support the 1 million white-collar Indians who legally work in the US on work visas. #S386 by #Utah & #SenMikeLee would accelerate the trend.


Lawsuit: CEOs Invite India’s Caste Culture into U.S. Workplaces

Hi1B
AP Photo/Altaf Qadri
12:59

A California state agency is recognizing the 
quiet spread of India’s ancient caste 
discrimination into America’s Fortune 500 
professional workplaces.
“The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) filed a federal lawsuit today under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 … against Cisco Systems, Inc. (Cisco) and two managers for discrimination, harassment, and retaliation,” said a June 30 press release. The press release continued:
The lawsuit alleges that managers at Cisco’s San Jose headquarters campus, which employs a predominantly South Asian workforce, harassed, discriminated, and retaliated against an engineer because he is Dalit Indian, a population once known as the “untouchables” under India’s centuries-old caste system.
The lawsuit alleges that Complainant was expected to accept a caste hierarchy within the workplace where he held the lowest status within a team of higher-caste colleagues, receiving less pay, fewer opportunities, and other inferior terms and conditions of employment because of his religion, ancestry, national origin/ethnicity, and race/color.
India’s ancient Hindu religion ranks people from birth into several unchangeable castes and requires relentless discrimination by a civic hierarchy of upper caste against lower caste. The hierarchy is so ingrained in Indian society, in Hinduism, marriage rules, parenting, education, and careers that it is visible in Indians’ DNA, according to a 2013 press release by Harvard Medical School:
“This genetic data tells us a three-part cultural and historical story,” said [Harvard professor David] Reich, who is also an associate member of the Broad Institute. “Prior to about 4000 years ago there was no mixture. After that, widespread mixture affected almost every group in India, even the most isolated tribal groups. And finally, endogamy [marriage within caste] set in and froze everything in place.”
The caste culture is now being brought into U.S. workplaces by Fortune 500 executives who allow Indian-born lower managers to act as ethnic power brokers in exchange for meeting corporate deadlines and payroll targets.
Fortune 500 companies and their subcontractors use the H-1B, L-1, OPT, CPT, and TN pipelines to employ at least 1.3 million visa workers, most of whom are Indian. Many of the Indians are training in the U.S. to take Americans’ jobs back to India, and many others are working in exchange for the promise of employer-provided green cards.
The legal workforce also works alongside a growing illegal population of foreign college-graduate workers, most of whom get jobs as gig workers for a large number of Indian-run companies that work as legal subcontractors for Fortune 500 companies.
This corporate collusion with Inda’s caste system — and the associated job sellingkickbacks, and cheating — has pushed millions of American graduates out of Fortune 500 jobs, is wrecking American-style professionalism, and is undermining needed innovation.
India’s invasive caste culture is also getting quiet political support from the wealthy investors who want more Indian labor, and from the left-wing progressives who impose variety — or diversity — as they try to fracture the political and cultural power of mainstream Americans.

The Indian workers “are genuinely nice, pleasant people for the most part,” one U.S. software expert told Breitbart. Using the name, “Nathanial from New Mexico,” he  continued:
I’d say 99 percent of them are very nice people. But this is a caste system in India. They all know what level of caste they’re in. Okay. So among themselves as a group of H-1Bs, these workers have their own issues. They won’t communicate with somebody that they deem to be lower [caste] than them — even though that person that they deem to be lower is a hell of a lot smarter than they are and has the right answers.
U.S. managers exploit the caste culture to manage their Indian workers and increasingly impose a similar top-down hierarchy on American professionals, he said:
It is a culture in a lot of these [Fortune 500 Information Technology] shops where I work. That is because these [Indian] folks come in and they have their caste system, and upper management somehow has keyed into that, and the way that their H-1B visa managers … treat their [H-1B] employees.
American upper managers think they can treat American employees the same way. American [professionals] know we speak our mind, we speak up when things are not right, we speak up when we think things are going good. But nowadays, if you speak out of turn, you’re [soon] filing for unemployment because they will find some nitpicking things about you to get you gone.
“A lot of Indians escape India to get away from the [caste] politics,” said Roger Ross, the policy director at the U.S. Tech Workers. He continued:
I speak to a lot of Indians who say “My primary goal in coming to the United States is not to get a job, but to escape the discriminatory politics of India” … These people coming here think there will be professionalism [at work], but they don’t find it and they see the same politics of caste here.
But other Indian visa workers import their caste culture in their workplaces and even pass it on to their U.S.-born children, he said. “It is endemic in any sector where there is a higher percentage of Indian workers and managers,” he said.
But a similar cultural skew is seen in other diverse groups because managers usually prefer to communicate and direct people of their own culture, such as Chinese, Russian, and American cultures, he said. “It is difficult to say that they are wrong — if I wanted to be able to communicate, I would probably relate better to someone from my country county, culture, and language,” he said.
In Indian-dominated companies, this process ensures that “there is an active dislike for Americans in general because the Indian managers cannot impose their culture,” he said. “You have two things going — they are excluding [lower-caste] people from their own county and are also excluding Americans — white, black, brown, Latinos, etc.”
Many Indians who get citizenship try to escape the caste system, said an Indian who identified himself as “Vikram from Texas.”
These new Americans want their children to live in America and to work in professional jobs, but India’s management “mafia” has a growing control over entry-level jobs in the tech sector, he told Breitbart News. The naturalized Americans often get rejected for jobs by Indian managers who fear they will use their legal rights to expose the caste-linked corruption, Vikram said.
In a statement to Reuters, Cisco denied wrongdoing:
Cisco spokeswoman Robyn Blum said the network gear maker followed its process to investigate employee concerns in this case and would “vigorously defend itself” against the lawsuit.
“Cisco is committed to an inclusive workplace for all,” she said. “We were fully in compliance with all laws as well as our own policies.”
The California lawsuit describes the caste discrimination suffered by “John Doe” in Cisco’s Indian workforce:
John Doe is Dalit Indian, a population once known as “The Untouchables,” who are the most disadvantaged people under India’s centuries-old caste system. As a strict Hindu social and religious hierarchy, India’s caste system defines a person status based on their religion ancestry, national origin/ethnicity, and race/color, or the caste in which they are born and will remain all the death. At the bottom of the Indian hierarchy is the Dalit, typically the darkest complexion case, who were traditionally subject to “untouchability” practices, which segregated them by social custom and legal mandate. Although de jure segregation ended in India, lower caste persons like Dalits continue to face de facto segregation and discrimination in all spheres. Not only do Dalits endure the most severe inequality and unfair treatment in both the public and private sectors, they are often targets of hate violence and torture. Of India’s approximately 1.3 billion people, but 200 million are Dalits.
Unlike Doe, most Indian immigrants in the United States are from upper castes. For example, in 2003, only 1.5 percent of Indian immigrants were Dalits or members of lower castes. More than 90 percent were from high or dominant castes. Similarly, upon information and belief, the same is true of Indian employees in Cisco’s workforce in San Jose, California.
As alleged below, at Cisco San Jose headquarters, Doe worked with a team of entirely Indian employees. The team members grew up in India and immigrated as adults to the United States. Except for Doe, the entire team is also from the high castes in India. As beneficiaries of the caste system, Doe’s higher caste supervisors and co-workers imported the discriminatory system’s practices into their team and Cisco’s workplace.
Doe’s supervisors and co-workers, Defendants Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella, are from India’s highest castes. Both knew Doe is a Dalit. They had certain expectations for him at Cisco. Doe was expected to accept a case hierarchy within the workplace where dough held the lowest status within the team, and as a result received less pay, fewer opportunities, and other inferior terms and conditions of employment because of his religion, ancestry, national origin/ethnicity, and race/color. They also expected him to endure a hostile work environment. When Doe expectedly opposed the unlawful practices, contrary to the traditional order between the Dalits and the higher castes, Defendants retaliated against him. Worse yet, Cisco failed to even acknowledge the unlawful nature of this conduct, nor to take any steps necessary to prevent such discrimination, harassment, and retaliation from continuing in its workplace.
Not only did Cisco disregard Doe, but also its own workforce. For decades, similar to Doe’s team, Cisco’s technical workforce has been — and continues to be — predominantly South Asian Indian. According to the 2071 EEO-1 Establishment Report (EEO-1 Report), for example, Cisco has a significant overrepresentation of Asian employees compared to other companies in the communications, equipment, and manufacturing industry (NAICS 3342) in the same geographic area, which is statistically different at nearly 30 standard deviations. Such overrepresentation is also present in management and professional job categories. In addition to Cisco’s direct workforce, Cisco also employs a significant number of South Asian Indian workers through Indian-owned consulting firms. When combining its direct employees and consultants together, Cisco is among the top five H-1B visa users in the United States. Over 70 percent of these H-1B workers come from India, Outside of San Jose, Cisco’s second-largest workforce is in India.
Although Cisco has employed a predominantly South Asian Indian workforce for decades, Cisco was — and continues to be — wholly unprepared to prevent, remedy or deter the unlawful conduct against Doe or similarly situated lower-caste workers. Cisco failed to take any steps whatsoever to prevent “… inequalities associated with [c]aste status, ritual purity, and social inclusion [from] becom[ing] embedded in its workplace, which is a documented problem for “… American mainstream institutions that have significant South Asian immigrant communities.”
Caste distinctions are almost entirely foreign to Americans whose own civic distinctions often are unclear to foreigners. But Indian H-1B workers tell Breitbart News that caste distinctions can be evident in casual contact, names, and in business developments.
“Americans are culturally oblivious to this idea that something so Third World would be in the United States,” said Jay Palmer, a consultant helps India’s mistreated visa workers to sue U.S.-based corporations. “I’ve had so many Indians tell me it is an Indian Mafia — they use those words.”

Follow Neil Munro on Twitter @NeilMunroDC, or email the author at NMunro@Breitbart.com.


US unemployment rate dips, but millions remain jobless or face wage cuts


3 July 2020
The US added 4.8 million jobs in June the Labor Department reported Thursday as leisure, hospitality, retail and other largely low-wage businesses reopened last month as part of the rush to reopen the economy.
Responding to the figures President Trump declared, “this is the largest monthly jobs gain in the history of our country,” which proves that “our economy is roaring back.” He boasted that the “stock market is doing extremely well” and then claimed that his administration’s response to the pandemic was “working out very well.”
After an historic loss of 22.2 million jobs in March and April, employment has increased by 7.5 million over the last two months. But the US has still suffered a net loss of 14.7 million jobs—or 9.6 percent—since February.
A man walks past a retail store that is going out of business due to the coronavirus pandemic in Winnetka, Ill., Tuesday, June 23, 2020. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
The fall in the official jobless rate to 11.1 percent, moreover, is based on employment data that was collected in mid-June before at least 19 states were forced to pause or roll back reopening plans due to the 80 percent rise in COVID-19 cases over the last two weeks. On Thursday the US hit a new daily record of 53,000 infections, with the new epicenters of the disease in Texas, Arizona, California and Florida.
According to the Labor Department report, leisure and hospitality employment rose by 2.1 million, accounting for about two-fifths of the gain in total nonfarm employment in June. Jobs in food services and drinking places rose by 1.5 million last month, following a similar gain in May. Despite these gains, employment in food services and drinking places is down by 3.1 million since February.
Employment in the retail trade rose by 740,000, after a gain of 372,000 in May and losses totaling 2.4 million in March and April combined. On net, employment in the industry is 1.3 million below what it was in February.
Economists warn that many of the job gains in restaurants, bars and retail establishments can be attributed to the government’s Paycheck Protection Program, which provided small businesses loans to cover eight weeks of wages and other expenses. The expiration of these loans will to lead to a new wave of layoffs.
The herding of workers back into the factories, despite the uncontrolled spread of the virus, also led to a rise in manufacturing employment by 356,000, with over half the job gains in motor vehicle and parts production. Manufacturing employment is still down by 757,000 since February. Construction employment also increased by 158,000 in June, following a gain of 453,000 in May. There have been several outbreaks of coronavirus on construction sites in California, Texas and other states.
The official jobless rate does not count millions of workers who are undocumented immigrants, those forced to work part-time who want full-time jobs and workers who have fallen out of the labor force. Some 8.2 million workers, up from 5 million in February, are not counted as unemployed because they have not been actively looking for a job during the last four weeks or were unavailable to work. Another 9.1 million workers were forced to work part time in June, more than double the February level.
In a separate report released Thursday, the Labor Department stated that 1.43 million workers filed first-time claims for unemployment benefits last week. More than 48 million laid off workers filed for benefits over the last 15 weeks and the number receiving benefits for consecutive weeks rose by 59,000 last week to 19.29 million. Several states saw increases in initial claims last week, including Indiana (24,033), Washington (8,110) and Virginia (7,769), the Labor Department reported.
Despite Trump’s claim that the “economy is roaring back,” corporations are carrying out mass layoffs and using the pandemic to implement long-planned restructuring and cost-cutting plans. Under the terms of the bipartisan CARES Act, the government handed a $25 billion bailout to US airlines, which agreed not to implement any involuntary layoffs or furloughs before October 1. A tidal wave of layoffs is expected after that.
American Airlines told staff Thursday it has more than 20,000 employees, including 8,000 flight attendants, that it doesn’t need due to reduced air travel plans in the Fall. Last month, American Airlines CEO Doug Parker told investors that the company would have “20 percent fewer people,” adding, “We’re able to use this crisis to figure out things that we can do more efficiently.”
Delta Air Lines told its pilots last week that it would soon send out furlough notices to 2,558 pilots, nearly 20 percent of its pilots. United CEO Scott Kirby said last month that the airline could avoid layoffs if employees were willing to accept reduced work hours and pay. "We are hopeful at United that we can work with our unions to variablize our pay structure and frankly, not lay anyone off, not furlough any of our frontline employees. Instead, using voluntary programs, and in particular, asking people to work fewer hours until we get through the crisis."
Demands for reduced work hours and wage cuts are being made across the economy. In an article titled, “Pay cuts are becoming a defining feature of the coronavirus recession,” the Washington Post noted this week that twice as many US workers have had their pay cut during the pandemic than in the Great Recession.
At least four million private-sector workers have had their pay cut, according to data provided to the Post by economists who worked on a labor market analysis for the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute. “Salary cuts are spreading most rapidly,” the article noted, “in white-collar industries, which suggests a deep recession and slow recovery since white-collar workers are usually the last to feel financial pain.”
Hourly workers have also seen their hours and weekly pay reduced. Companies like General Motors, BuzzFeed News, Occidental Petroleum, HCA Healthcare, Mass General Brigham, Tesla and Sotheby’s, as well as the states of Ohio and California, have told workers they must accept pay cuts between 5 and 50 percent to save their jobs. The median wage reduction was 10 percent, the study found.
Two years ago, business leaders and the corporate media were complaining that record low unemployment levels had led to “tight labor markets” and the largest increase in wages in nearly a decade. Although the increase—3.1 percent—was barely above inflation and did not even make a dent in the decline in real wages that has taken place not only since 2008, but since 1978, the paltry rise was considered unacceptable by the corporate and financial elite.
With the destruction of tens of millions of jobs—and estimates that nearly 40 percent will never come back—the ruling class has gotten rid of its “tight labor market” problem. It now hopes to use mass joblessness as a hammer to further drive down the wages and conditions of workers.
At the same time, the Trump administration wants to use the prospect of destitution to drive workers back into the factories and other workplaces, which are still vectors of the deadly COVID-19 disease.
On Wednesday, Trump’s labor secretary, Eugene Scalia, made it clear the administration would not renew the extra $600 a week in benefits that unemployed workers receive, once the program ends the week of July 25. “The extra $600,” Scalia told an Ohio audience, “was really an important benefit for Americans” when “the economy was shutting down and Americans were being told ‘You can’t go to work.’ As we reopen, I don’t think we want to continue that,” Scalia said.
The elimination of the benefit will mean a 66 percent reduction in weekly income for jobless workers even as food prices have seen the largest rise in half a century. The gutting of this meager social safety net, along with demands for sacrifice from corporations that have received massive bailouts, will provoke enormous social conflict and foster greater support for the socialist transformation of the US and world economy.
“Wall Street is a giant vacuum cleaner, sucking up all the money in society,” said a Fiat Chrysler worker in Detroit who participated in a work stoppage over the spread of COVID-19 in his factory last week. “This is a class war.”


No Labor Shortage: 35M Americans Remain Unemployed, Underemployed; All Want Full-Time Jobs

Unemployed-Americans-640x480
Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images
2:40
There remain more than 35.1 million Americans who are unemployed, out of the labor force, and underemployed, but all of whom want full-time jobs, showing no shortage of labor from which business can hire.
Spurred by the Chinese coronavirus crisis, nearly 18 million Americans were unemployed in the month of June, the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report reveals. More than 23 percent of those unemployed are teenagers who want full-time, entry-level jobs, and 15.4 percent are black Americans.
Another 14.5 percent of those unemployed are Hispanic, as well as 13.8 percent who are Asian, and 10.1 percent who are white Americans — all wanting full-time jobs.
(Bureau of Labor Statistics)
While those who have been temporarily laid off, 10.6 million, remain the majority of the unemployed population, the number of Americans who are permanently losing their jobs has continued to climb. In June, nearly three million Americans were permanently laid off from their jobs.
The number of workers who are completely out of the labor force has doubled since February. In June, about 8.2 million Americans were out of the labor force, but all want full-time jobs. Of those, more than 680,000 said they believed there are no jobs available for them in the current economic climate.
Americans who are employed part-time, but who want full-time work, remains at 9.1 million. Millions of these Americans had their full-time hours cut or were unable to find full-time jobs.
While President Trump has suspended a slew of visa programs to decrease foreign competition against unemployed Americans, the big business lobby, Big Tech CEOs, and the donor class have complained that the U.S. needs a constant flow of cheap, foreign labor for business to cull.
Americans, by a majority of 54 percent, are on Trump’s side — including the majority of black Americans. The latest Rasmussen Reports survey finds that about two-in-three black Americans believe there is no shortage of qualified, available Americans to take working and middle-class jobs.
Every year, the U.S. admits about 1.2 million legal immigrants on green cards to permanently resettle in the country. In addition, another 1.4 million foreign workers are admitted every year to take American jobs.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.  

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