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Comment by jfuhrman | Hacker News Reader

Isn't this at will employment? Companies can ask any employee to take the trash out or even clean up the kitchen(barring physical disabilities and strength). If you refuse they can fire you, same as you can quit anytime for any reason or no reason.

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"According to federal guidelines, the visas are intended for foreigners with advanced science or computer skills to fill discrete positions when American workers with those skills cannot be found."

Hint: American workers that are cheaper than American workers can never be found.

Cheaper is not a skill.

skills are not found in a vacuum but a market which has a price point. when someone says Americans lacking skills they usually mean at prevailing market prices. which always operate in the direction of reducing cost. so yes providing services at a certain price point is a skill. businesses do it by increasing efficiency, people do it by cutting discretionary income.

Nope. The visa does not count cost as being a factor. If the only person in America that you can find costs $1MM a year, then you are supposed to hire that person, instead of seeking H1-Bs. If you can't afford them, then you clearly did not need them that badly in the first place.

That doesn't really hold up. Once we are well clear of the minimum wage, there is room to have an inversion where there are 1000 positions to fill and 500 qualified candidates who could auction-price themselves above the profit they generate.

If the cost of employing someone is above the profit they generate, then you don't hire them. US corporations don't have a legal right to purchase labor at a price that makes their businesses viable. If they can't make money employing people in the business they're in, then they need to rethink the structure of that business or their investors need to put their capital elsewhere.

I don't really think H1B workers can be considered at will workers. The company usually retains the right to fire the worker at will, but H1B workers have limited rights to remain in the US should they leave their jobs without a new sponsor lined up.

US citizens and permanent residents can change jobs freely, drop out of the work force, go back to school, transition to a new career, and so forth, all without jeopardizing their right to live and work in the US. While H1B workers do have some rights to change jobs, their mobility is considerably more limited.

You don't have to be especially cynical to believe that the very one-sided nature of the "at-will" relationship here, along with the high stakes for the employee (if you can't get a new job with a new sponsor, you will have to leave the country), is huge part of the appeal of these visas.

I was referring to the laid off employees, not the new ones.

Yes, I did understand that, but I think that if you're replacing "at will" employees with non at-will workers, in a very one-sided relationship, that is a relevant consideration in any use of the phrase "at will".

H1B employees are "at-will", and even in a more precarious situation with a sword of Damocles hanging by a thread over their heads. If they quit, they get sent back to their home country unless they arranged in advance for a different employer to sponsor them. If they are terminated, or laid off, they get sent back to their home country. It's fucked.

But they're not at will, as they don't have the "benefits" that everyone says being at will brings the employees.

They weren't fired for failure to carry out their duties, they were fired because they were more expensive than their H1B replacements, which clearly violates the purpose of the H1B program.

So, was it legal for Disney to fire them? Probably. Was it legal for Disney (or rather, its contractor) to replace them with H1Bs? Probably not.

What Disney did is perfectly legal. They fired people, and hired a third-party contractor to fill the positions for cheaper. That third party contractor was "unable" find Americans to fill the positions of "contracted IT worker" so used H1-B workers to fill roles at the contracting agency, not disney. They were then contracted out by the agency (who they officially work for) to do work at Disney.

It is incredibly shitty and absolutely against the spirit of the visas, but it's not against the letter of the law.

I highly question that, and I really, really wish that they would file a lawsuit so that this question could be settled by a judge.

Sure it was easy enough to fire the employees to make room for their replacements due to at will employment, but did that wasn't really the focus of the article (and not to be snarky at all but I find it fascinating that that was your take away after reading it)

>(and not to be snarky at all but I find it fascinating that that was your take away after reading it)

It might be because I have a low tolerance for clickbait headlines and articles.

Yea, if they wanted to get paid/severance, they had to do what they were asked to do. Seems reasonable? It sucks that someone else got their job but they were under no obligation to stick around unless they wanted to get paid.

The point of the article isn't that someone else got their job, it's that someone else was imported to take their job under the guise of a program that is intended to fill labor shortages at the prevailing wage, not as a means of achieving a cheaper workforce.

And if you didn't want your dick pics leaked, then you had to pay the fee that the person was asking for. Seems reasonable?

No, it's not. And at-will employment does not mean that you are their slave. Quit parroting that

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