Marianne Kolbasuk McGee | April 2

Information Week - Thousands of employers are scrambling this week to file H-1B visa petitions in hopes that the U.S. government will approve their applications to hire foreign tech workers in fiscal 2009. InformationWeek analyzed the list of companies that had their H-1B visa applications approved last year and the number of approvals they got.

Among the top 10 companies having H-1B visa petitions approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for fiscal 2007 (which started Oct. 1, 2006) are eight Indian firms -- with Infosys ranked at No. 1 with 4,559 visas -- and two U.S.-based companies, Microsoft and Intel, having a combined 1,328 visa petitions approved. In total, the top 10 companies had 12,876 H-1B visa petitions approved.

Christopher S. Rugabear | Washington | April 3

AP - The battle over patent reform, a sleepy sounding subject that affects new, cheaper medicines, Chinese counterfeits and BlackBerry addicts, has always sent high-tech companies and drugmakers to their respective corners.

But now organized labor is getting in the fight, using its lobbying muscle to stop -- or at least shape -- proposed changes to patent law.

Spurred by concern about overseas piracy of U.S. goods, unions have stepped up their opposition to patent reform legislation pending in the Senate. The AFL-CIO and the Change to Win coalition, a group of seven unions that includes the Teamsters, argued in separate letters recently that proposed reforms to the patent system would make it easier for competitors in China and India to counterfeit U.S. products and send more U.S jobs overseas.

Washington | March 27

BBC - More than 100 Indians who moved to the US for jobs have marched hundreds of miles to Washington DC in protest at being forced to work "like slaves".

The men plan to take their protest to the Indian ambassador.

The men say recruiters tricked them into paying up to $20,000 each for a new life in the US, where they then had to work in exploitative conditions.

The Mississippi firm that employed them, Signal International, has denied they were mistreated.

It says the men were paid wages above the local average and given good accommodation.

It accuses the recruitment firm of deceiving the Indians and has now ended its contract.

Erin Conroy | March 18

AP - Puzzling resumes: Career advisors have always said that your resume should stand out against the rest of the stack. But how much creativity should your cover letter ooze -- even when looking in creative fields?

A telephone questionnaire of about 250 people by online job search company Creative Group found that more than half of marketing executives and a quarter of advertising executives view unusual job-hunting tactics -- such as sending a potential employer a shoe "to get a foot in the door" -- as unprofessional.

Some examples the respondents gave of peculiar job seeking:

• One applicant sent six postcards, each a puzzle piece, which formed his resume.
• A candidate sent an egg carton with faux eggs and a message saying she delivered fresh ideas daily.
• A job hunter used an office building across the street to post his qualifications on a large sign.
• Another sent a baseball mitt and said he wanted to be part of the team.
• A woman printed her name on golf balls and sent them to executives that were hiring.

Rick Merritt | Bengaluru, India | March 17

EE Times - Wipro Ltd., one of India's largest outsourcing companies, is eyeing expansion in Europe and the U.S. as part of the next phase of globalization. The $5 billion IT services firm plans to open two new software development centers in the U.S. and is studying a sizable acquisition in technology R&D in Germany.

"We want to give our customers a choice of geography with a distributed network of low cost development centers close to their centers of operation," said Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro Ltd. in a presentation to members of the international press here.

Wipro already has two software development centers in the U.S. One in Troy, Mich., focuses on automotive systems. Its other software development center is in Atlanta.

(originally posted at The Seminal)

As Bill Richardson says, the U.S. has an immigration problem, but Mexico has one too.

"Free" trade deals like NAFTA devastated Mexico's domestic economy because these were unfair. Mexico gave up its protective tariffs on things like agricultural products while the U.S. didn't, meaning that food grown more cheaply in Mexico could not compete with American grown produce. NAFTA put over 2 million Mexican farmers out of business. This "free" trade agreement also allowed multi-national corporations like Walmart, fueled by even cheaper Chinese labor, to drive out thousands of small Mexican businesses and depress Mexican wages.

Mexico simply can't compete with places like China, so the American businesses that were supposed to set up shop in Mexico under NAFTA have largely moved on to cheaper locales. All this wonderful trade leaves Mexico with a glut of unemployed workers, mostly young men. These people then go looking for new jobs and a better life in the United States.

And they have little choice. While wages in Mexico fell 20% since 2001, immigrants can make as much as 13 times more in the U.S. It's not hard to see why some people would risk their lives to come to this country. You're talking about a 1300% pay raise!

Indeed, free trade and immigration go hand in hand. Free trade allows industry to take advantage of uneven prices in the global marketplace while at the same time forcing immigrants to take advantage of uneven wages. We are literally incentivizing illegal immigration. In the case of NAFTA, America gets the opportunity to sell our goods to Mexican consumers coupled with an influx of Mexican workers. Free trade means free movement of everything - goods, services, and labor.

There has been much talk lately about the state of the middle-class, the insecurity of workers, and the flat-lining of wages in America. Much of the debate has revolved around the changes in the make-up of our labor force today. It has been erroneously reported that the shrinking of wages and of the middle-class is due to our no longer being a manufacturing society and due to out-sourcing. While this provides a convenient foe, it does not accurately depict the situation. There is a direct correlation between the flat-lining wages and the shrinking middle-class with the reduction of the labor movement in America. The only groups who have seen real growth in wages the past few decades are groups who are represented by unions. If this is true, then why are unions and the labor movement not more powerful and vibrant?

Executive Summary

Is Organized Labor a Decaying Business Model? The answer is not a definitive yes or no, but rather yes and no. If organized labor continues in the same manner it has for the last century, then the probability of relevant existence in the next century is very slim, and labor will become the one-century wonder. Unions must accept the new paradigm, which is the nature of work is changing, and will continue to evolve. The economic forces of globalization are a major contributor to this evolution, as is the shift towards an internet based information society. The traditional blue-collar labor business model is being replaced with robotics, technology, outsourcing, and globalization.

There is a common myth that runs through America, propagated by the wealthy for mass consumption. This myth has been one of the most dangerous and divisive instruments used against the American working class of all races. This myth has been a part of Americana from the beginning and continues today unabated for the most part and constantly being reinforced by the media, corporate America, and the talking heads. The myth is simply this: that if an individual will work hard, follow the rules, and be patient that they can be successful. The biggest determinate to a person’s rise in this society is hard work and personal responsibility.

Verena Dobnik | New York | Nov 21

AP - A labor rights group alleged Tuesday that crucifixes sold in religious gift shops in the U.S. are produced under "horrific" conditions in a Chinese factory with more than 15-hour work days and inadequate food.

"It's a throwback to the worst of the garment sweatshops 10, 20 years ago," said Charles Kernaghan, director of the National Labor Committee.

Kernaghan held a news conference in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral to call attention to conditions at a factory in Dongguan, a southern Chinese city near Hong Kong, where he said crosses sold at the historic church and elsewhere are made.

LABOR DAY

By David Podvin

Another Labor Day has arrived, making it the perfect time to examine how American workers are victimized by those who pledge friendship. Conservatives never betray laborers, if only because it is impossible to betray people you openly despise. It is progressives who seduce the working class with false promises of fidelity.

In recent decades, American workers have seen their wages steadily lose ground to inflation while the monied elite have prospered. The national distribution of wealth now skews higher than ever, the byproduct of tax policies and trade agreements and illegal immigration. Conservatives have faithfully promoted the interests of the GOP’s aristocratic benefactors while liberals have failed to represent the peasants who vote Democratic.

JORDAN ROBERTSON | SAN FRANCISCO | September 1

AP - The Bush administration can go ahead with a pilot program to allow as many as 100 Mexican trucking companies to freely haul their cargo anywhere within the U.S. for the next year, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a request made by the Teamsters union, the Sierra Club and the nonprofit Public Citizen to halt the program.

The appeals court ruled the groups have not satisfied the legal requirements to immediately stop what the government is calling a "demonstration project," but can continue to argue their case.

The trucking program is scheduled to begin Thursday.

Teamsterpower at the Daily Kos asks, "Can You Be a "Progressive Capitalist" and Anti-Union?"

No, you can't.

I worked in finance for ten years. Finance and the markets don't care for unions, only for siphoning from the wealth that labor creates.

One must have a respect for both capital and labor--and labor needs unions, otherwise it will always be exploited. Capital will always screw labor, at any time, in any place, in any way possible.

Marx wasn't wrong about everything.

In the mid-1970s the TV sitcom The Jeffersons portrayed the rags-to-riches story of a black entrepreneur living the American Dream. The pugnacious and overbearing George Jefferson (former neighbor of All in the Family’s Archie Bunker) becomes a dry cleaning magnate and leaves blue-collar Queens for swanky Manhattan. As the show’s theme song recounts:

“Well we’re moving on up,
To the east side.
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.
Moving on up,
To the east side.
We finally got a piece of the pie.”

But now fast-forward to 2007 and real world America. When it comes to those deluxe apartments in the sky, today’s exclusive penthouses sit atop much taller high-rises--but the chances of ever living in one (or even breathing its rarified air as a dinner guest) have shrunk considerably. And although the proverbial economic pie is much larger today as well, a relative handful of gluttons are gorging themselves while everyone else settles for leftovers and crumbs.

Ian references Kevin Phillip's work in The View From There, so I thought I'd try and explain it a bit.

Kevin Phillip's monumental tome Wealth and Democracy talks about, among other things, the lifecycle of an economic empire. He analyzes the Spanish, Dutch, English and American empires in great depth and finds many things in common. The latter three were all industrial empires. The Spanish empire was based on bringing home the spoils of conquest, so it has a slightly different cycle (though it ends the same way), and I'll ignore it here.

Continued after the jump and well worth reading. ~eds.

Thanks team agonist for inviting the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy to guest blog on the immigration bill!

The question of the week is- how would the Senate's new immigration bill, the proposed "Grand Bargain" for immigration reform impact America's middle class and everyone working their way into the middle class? DMI applied our famed two-part litmus test that we use to grade proposed immigration legislation to this latest bill to evaluate its impact on the current and aspiring middle class.

It didn't earn the kind of grades you'd like to take home at the end of the school year, that's for sure.

Leslie Miller | February 23

AP - The news that Mexican trucks will be allowed to haul freight deeper into the United States drew an angry reaction Friday from labor leaders, safety advocates and members of Congress.

They said Mexico has substandard trucks and low-paid drivers that will threaten national security, cost thousands of jobs and endanger motorists on the northern side of the Mexican border.

The Bush administration on Thursday announced its plan to have U.S. inspectors oversee Mexican trucking companies that carry cargo across the border.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- For most people, it's back to work Tuesday after a holiday weekend with family and friends. And for many, a new study shows, it will be under a bad boss. Nearly two of five bosses don't keep their word and more than a fourth bad mouth those they supervise to co-workers, the Florida State University study shows.

And those all-too-common poor managers create plenty of problems for companies as well, leading to poor morale, less production and higher turnover.

"They say that employees don't leave their job or company, they leave their boss," said Wayne Hochwarter, an associate professor of management in the College of Business at Florida State University, who joined with two doctoral students at the school to survey more than 700 people working in a variety of jobs about how their bosses treat them.

Del Quentin Wilber | August 2

Washington Post - Flight attendants for Northwest Airlines Corp. announced yesterday that they have begun a countdown to walk off the job, a day after rejecting a contract that would have cut their pay by about 20 percent.

The announcement is the latest in a battle between Northwest, which is struggling through bankruptcy reorganization, and its 9,300 flight attendants.

The employees, who are represented by the Association of Flight Attendants, said they were gearing up to take action as soon as 10 p.m. Aug. 15, the end of a 15-day warning period.

The union is not in negotiations with the airline, but an agreement that avoids job actions could still be reached before the Aug. 15 deadline.

Patrik Jonsson | Atlanta | April 21

CSM - To critics of the administration's immigration policies, the Department of Homeland Security sent out a strong message this week: Current laws can discourage illegal immigrants and those who hire them.

On Wednesday, federal immigration officials stormed light manufacturing facilities in Atlanta and 41 other US locales, arresting more than 1,100 suspected illegal immigrants as well as people believed to have hired them.

..Stricter enforcement "is an effort to create an environment that allows broader reforms to move forward," says Craig Regelbrugge, co-chair of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform in Washington.

But "I'd rather see resources short-term going into [battling] organized human smuggling and exploitation as opposed to putting all of America's dairy farms out of business that have an immigrant workforce and that have met their responsibilities under the law," he says.

Gaiutra Bahadur | Philadelphia | April 9

Philadelphia Inquirer - To hear a 90-second sample of [H1Bees] and learn more about its creator, go to H1Bees

The photograph of Meenaish Damania - shown in a white sari, smiling and hopeful on her wedding day a year ago in India - occupies a place of pride in the MBA-educated banker's Morrisville apartment.

Damania was coming to the United States as the wife of one of India's software studs with an H1B, the State Department's highly coveted temporary work visa for skilled professionals.

She knew visa rules barred her from employment until the U.S. government accepted her husband's application for a green card, the document that would allow him to stay in the country permanently.

Craig S. Smith | Paris | March 12

NYT - French riot police officers fired tear gas into the historic Sorbonne building at the University of Paris early Saturday to disperse students who had occupied part of the 19th-century stone edifice since Wednesday.

The students were part of nationwide protests against new employment regulations that will allow employers to hire and fire young workers more easily. Hundreds of thousands of people have joined demonstrations to protest new rules for a "first employment contract," which gives companies the right to hire people under the age of 26 for a two-year trial period, during which they can be fired without cause.

J. Kyle Foster | Reston | January 24

WaPo - Reston-based Sprint Nextel Corp. froze pension plans for almost half of its 80,000 employees and won't offer a fixed retirement benefit to new workers as the company cuts labor costs to compete with other wireless carriers.

Key question: are they freezing execs plans too?

Andrew Murr | January 30

Newsweek - Until now, there were few hard facts about immigrant day labor. But this week urban planners from UCLA and the University of Illinois at Chicago will release the first national study of the shadowy labor pool, "On the Corner: Day Labor in the United States," a survey of 2,660 randomly selected day laborers in 20 states and Washington, D.C. The surprises? Researchers estimate that only 117,600 day laborers are looking for work on a typical day--and 25 percent are legal immigrants.

Miriam Pawel | Los Angeles | January 11

LAT - Where Eliseo Medina has gone, unions have grown. His successes in organizing immigrants show what farmworkers lost -- but can find again, he believes.

At 21, the farmworker from Delano with an eighth-grade education hopped an airplane for the first time, with $20, a bag of UFW buttons to sell and the name of a Chicago postal worker loyal to the union cause.

Part four of a four part series. Here are one and two and three.