Northeast Utilities brings on H-1B workers
Connecticut state lawmakers held a press conference Thursday demanding answers from Northeast Utilities about its unofficial plans to ship IT jobs to India. This press conference was mostly wind and fury. The state may have lost its leverage over NU when it put its stamp on a merger last year.
At this press conference, State Rep. Lonnie Reed, who chairs the state’s Energy Committee, said that during the merger talks with Boston-based NStar, NU “promised not to do any layoffs, but to do it through attrition, and to let us know in advance,” Reed said, according to a report in the New Haven Register. “There is a process in place and they have not adhered to it. That just undermines their credibility,” she said, according to the newspaper.
This helps to explain NU’s heads-up to employees about its offshore plans. (See: Utility sets IT department on path to self-destruction.) NU management knows this is the kind of news that will prompt IT employees to rush to the exits. Accelerating attrition, and dismantling the IT workforce through fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD), is probably easier than bringing lawmakers news of a layoff.
But what is actually going on inside of NU IT?
So far this year, Infosys, the Bangalore, India-based IT services giant, has filed about 30 Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) with the U.S. Dept. of Labor, according to the records kept by MyVisaJobs.com. LCAs are filed with the Labor Dept. for wage determinations. H-1B visa holders work in the U.S. on temporary visas and have to be paid the prevailing wage.
More: http://blogs.computerworld.com/it-outsourcing/22887/northeast-utilities-brings-h-1b-workers
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