One the myths that refuses to to die is that there is a shortage of engineers, scientists and the like in this country. Various CEOS continually throw up their collective hands and bemoan this ‘fact’ in newspaper articles and television appearances. Accompanying the broken-record recitation of this technical ‘calamity’ is a plea for an increase in the number of foreign talents allowed to enter the United States to work in these ‘unfillable’ positions.
Of course, a very high percentage of the imported individuals who work in these technical jobs–working for companies headquartered in the United States–are paid far, far less than if a U.S. citizen was performing the duties. Pensions (especially) and long-term benefits are unheard of because they are unnecessary for these importees. Foreign workers have zero leverage.
The following is written by Christopher Moylan, someone who is more than capable AND willing to shatter this regurgitated corporate illusion. His living and working in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley only adds to his credibility.
Shortage of skilled workers is a convenient mirage
By Christopher R. Moylan
May. 07, 2006
San Jose Mercury News
Know any scientists or engineers who have been laid off in the last five years?
Most readers would be able to answer “yes” to that question, but you’d never know it from reading op-ed pieces by local academics and senior managers from industry. “Technology companies are starving for skilled employees,” wrote IBM’s Jeanette Horan (Mercury News, May 2). “The supply is low.” Her solution, like that of San Jose State’s engineering dean Belle Wei (April 27) and former Autodesk CEO Carol Bartz (March 24, 2005) is to close what Wei refers to as “this alarming gap” by pressuring more women to major in technical fields. Others, such as SpikeSource CEO Kim Polese (May 1), use the excuse of a shortage of high-tech workers to justify eliminating “excessive restrictions on immigration” and allowing businesses to import higher numbers of foreign workers. Whether the cry is for more H-1B visas or more female engineers, the goal is the same: a dramatic increase in the supply of high-tech workers. The problem with these proposed remedies is that they address an employee shortage that does not, in fact, exist.
Thousands of highly trained scientists and engineers still roam Silicon Valley looking for work after having been cut adrift by the same types of people who now claim that they can’t find anyone to hire. And thousands more are now working in different fields at substantially lower salaries, having given up searching for an equivalent to their previous positions. “No one I know who has looked at the data with an open mind has been able to find any sign of a current shortage,” said demographer Michael Teitelbaum in the Wall Street Journal’s Nov. 16 front-page story, “Behind `Shortage’ of Engineers: Employers Grow More Choosy.” In a column titled “A Phony Science Gap?” (Feb. 22), the Washington Post’s Robert J. Samuelson explained in detail why “it’s emphatically not true, as much of the alarmist commentary on America’s `competitiveness’ implies, that the United States now faces crippling shortages in its technological elites.”
Do these bogus claims of a scarcity of skilled technical workers constitute a campaign to avoid having to pay market price for white-collar labor? Yes, but there’s more to it than that. Corporations legitimately can anticipate a shortage of such workers in the future, because their own actions are setting the stage for one.
Since the early 1980s, employers have systematically eliminated most of the traditional incentives for high-tech careers. They pay the inventors and developers of their products a fraction of what their sales and marketing representatives make. They have eliminated pensions, individual offices and medical benefits. They charge vacation time for company shutdowns. And, most significantly, they have done away with job security — a critical blunder because product-development cycles are often longer than economic cycles.
Read the rest here:
The best part of this scam by corporations is that the foreign workers they hire cannot vote in any election in America. Therefore they eliminate the dissatisfied workers vote for populist politicians that are concerned with the common good of all citizens. Corporations have a definite conflict of interest when it comes to this subject.
Every job that has been shipped overseas has eliminated a dissatisfied workers vote in America. Couple this with the war on organized labor this is the one-two punch that over the last fifteen years has destroyed the middle class in America.
The start of Rome’s decline occurred in the years after the ruling class taxed the curio (middle) class out existence. America is following this same scenario that bought Rome to it’s eventual demise.
There are now 5 classes of Americans.
The Ruling Class.
The Bureaucrat Class.
The Corporate Class.
The Technocrat Class.
The Servant Class.
The changes which allowed this to occur was a slow planned process of exporting jobs, business faculties and operations to countries which were more than happy to receive American companies without any changes to the protection of imports into their markets.
America’s politicians allowed this massive restructuring to take place at the expense of the taxpayer. One of the busiest department of the American government in the 80′ and 90′ was the department which helped many corporations to establish factories overseas and establish trade relations with other nations.
In exchange America got low cost products which swamp the market with over production. America is expected to absorb this over production for an unlimited time period. What was forgotten in the process is that as jobs and factories moved overseas the buying power of Americans would rest on the extension of purchase on credit for this over production.
Those who lost their jobs in America were forced to take lower paying jobs which would not be able to keep pace with absorbing the over production of products now being shipped to America from overseas.
At this point in time America has reached market saturation for this excess production. This explains the failure of the market to make any significant headway in the last 6 years. The countries which produced these product now are attempting to find new markets in which to sell this excess production.
These markets do not exist because all producers produced the product at the expense of paying the workers who if they could afford those products would buy them.
The war in Iraq, the culture war, the war on terror, the war on democratic institutions and the right vs. left polarization of politics in America are all a smoke screen to conceal and misdirect attention from the shift in the principles and fundamentals that America relied on in the past to remain an independent democratic self sustaining nation.
Now America is faced with a staggering trade imbalance, massive consumer debt, regressive punitive taxes of the servant class and sector depression of the economy.
Americans are faced with a reality that requires drastic changes in policy, direction and it’s vision of the future for generations to come. Politicians tip toe around the lion in the room which is waiting to eat them alive. Which explains why so many questions go unanswered, ignored or are never even asked.
The population is in a state of confusion due to the twisting of facts, statistics and cultural issues which are a result of the consolidation of all media outlets with the exception of the Internet. The Internet is the last remaining hold out for those who wish to see the reality of the world as it is but even this form of media is compromised by massive smear campaigns funded in secret by the first two classes.
These attacks on Internet occur on a minute by minute basis as the shouting match takes on substance. Most of America has tuned out and visits MySpace, MP3 download site or a Gaming site to avoid anything that might disturb their comfort level.
When the tipping point will occur where it all comes home to roost is anyone’s guess but the one thing that is assured is that the current bubble is unsustainable. This is why everyone in the ruling class is grabbing everything they can in an obscene orgy of greed, corruption and self interest. They know the world wide economy is going to crash and spark what might be labeled the first global riot when 90% of the world cannot afford to exist on their terms any longer.
It’s only a matter now of time. Time for everyone not included in the first two classes is running out in compounding increments.