I may be wrong, but I think H1-B is for recently graduated students and L-1 visas would be used for intra-corporate workers. So its a different program with totally different rules.
Whether countries (like the US) can limit the numbers of workers whose companies otherwise qualify (companies that have a presence here, who already have gotten "market access") with quotas is currently being disputed by India who argue that we had already agreed to an unlimited number of workers from qualified firms back in the 90s in the original Uruguay Round. In a letter, John Conyers and Lamar Smith (they sit on the Judiciary committee, The chairpeople of the committee have repeatedly asked USTR not to sign any
additional trade agreements that give irreversible entitlements to foreign firms that have the potential to enable the loss of millions of jobs. The wording makes it clear that current commitments already do present problems in this area. The US is not Europe which takes care of people when they lose a job, even if its for the rest of their life. Here, they deny that these changes are going on so workers who are displaced are expected to find other jobs. But, often there are no other jobs.
Its really a mixed bag. The logic of trade agreements makes a number of assumptions about workers, one that they can travel anywhere in the world to work, when in fact workers, not corporations are limited by national boundaries. At the same time corporations are being given new rights to use their workers - even from the least regulated countries, which will save them money on wages and cause a race to the bottom - "least common denominator" of regulation on standards of all kinds. (Harmonization)
Manufacturing is not a service- so its actual manufacturing workforce (as opposed to subcontractors working providing services, such as engineering or design to those manufacturers) may not be subject to the same liberal rules on intra-corporate work as service industries.
IMHO, They have obviously spent millions of man hours creating a new "amoral system" - in secret, then they are claiming its agreement - which its not, which totally shafts the people of the entire planet. For example, all the GOP's healthcare changes going on in the US now,
will lock in. Nobody knows that.
I don't know what they are trying to do.
I do know that a group of countries led by India is trying to
hold the US to the terms of the original Uruguay Round if Doha collapses definitively. This body of economic integration issues are the major subject of discussion I am sure in the upcoming Buenos-Aires WTO Ministerial.
Last year at the G20 meeting the G20 nations pledged to eliminate protectionism by 2018 so we should see all of the Trump/Clinton farce as an attempt to fool the American public (the European and Australian publics, although still not so well informed are far better informed about services liberalisation than Americans)
The changes sought, creation of a "world without walls" been described by former WTO DG Mike Moore as the largest wealth transfer in history.
The problem which we can see from the contentious health care non "debate" is that we still have a lot of unfinished work here in the US. Huge segments of our population are living paycheck to paycheck. Iregardless of other factors, suddenly putting millions of Americans out of work so that the jobs can be given to global subcontractors working for below what Americans see as the rock bottom "minimum wage" while offshoring millions of jobs and subcontracting away many jobs here, while gutting the social safety net (this is in fact what is being done) will likely cause extreme changes in a great many peoples health due to their failure to be able to do anything to prevent it (look up "restraint stress" in the medical literature on PubMed) Paradoxically, it will create a real health as well as a human nightmare.
If we look at the issues caused by climate change (especially extreme weather) and add in the expected jumps in the cost of energy caused by energy export (Australia has seen this same thing happen recently) - if we look at the typical construction of American homes (cellulose - i.e. paper over gypsum wallboard, i.e. need constant attention to keeping humidity low enough to prevent mold growth, something that will be hard for people struggling - either if they are not working, utilities may be out of their reach, or working two or three jobs -remember wages will fall- trying to maintain their homes.) as well as the low elevation and extended river valleys that make up the American heartland (not unlike the Amazon river basin in the future if temperatures rise only a few degrees C as they are predicted to do, perhaps much faster than predicted because of the methane clathrate release issue.) with various vector borne illnesses of poverty already having established a foothold in our southernmost states, they will work their way inward.
All of this and they clearly know it because they have been told all these things, the fake ignorance and denial of climate change, etc. is an act- still are hell bent on the changes they want to make tells us- what?
People all around the world have a vested interest in reversing these people's push to reverse the progress of the last century. They want to divide and conquer the planet by pitting all the people against one another in competition for the same vanishing pool of jobs and then reap the profits as wages approach zero.
If we do the math, in this situation of total market fauilure, they will end up the owners of everything everywhere and the people everywhere will be enslaved by debt, begging for them to give them a right to remain alive.
Technology should be giving humanity this amazing gift of time but instead these agreements take all the gifts and funnel them to the wealthiest and most corrupt companies and people. Not the most innovative. (unless you mean in thievery)
Chinese and Indian people deserve good wages, as do Americans, we all do.
We all also deserve to have opportunity in our own countries and not have entire groups of people's futures snatched away by some unholy deal to screw them, while stealing their votes.
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Also, trade agreements can hurt self-trained people by nullifying their experience. Even if they have decades of experience. Also, they have the potential to give corporations rights to use staff from all around the world, if they have "like" qualifications that are formally recognized. This puts smaller firms (the engines of most job creation in the US) at a huge disadvantage.
See the attached file from the OECD.
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Quote from: blueskull on Yesterday at 21:52:30>Quote from: schmitt trigger on Yesterday at 20:07:30>
The Chinese auto manufacturer BYD did invest on a factory to build electric transit buses for LA and Long Beach.
The factory of course, is located in Lancaster, a city close to Los Angeles.
However, according to NPR, the factory was promptly fined by the California Labor Commissioner's office. The plant in Lancaster, which has yet to open, is under investigation for paying workers below minimum wage. The workers were "imported" from China.
H1B for organizations with more than 50 employees requires matching, so essentially if you hire a Chinese in the US, you have to match a US worker. That's why you see some high tech companies set up their phone call centers and other low wage positions in the US to match their Chinese and Indian engineers.
For those companies without matching (such as a consultant company, which is pretty much full of H1B workers, like Tata or InfoSystems), their H1B workers must be paid very high in order to gain labor certification (so essentially they need to hit EB3 green card requirement just to get H1B).
As for minimal wage violation, there is a loophole in the laws to make it legal -- FTE (full time employment). You can certify an employer to work 1.0 FTE as if he is producing 40 hr/wk worth of outcome, but the real working hour doesn't have to be 40 hours.
Therefore you can set up a higher goal and pay them, say, 0.5 FTE so that they still work 40 hr/wk but you pay them for only 20 hours, effectively halves the wage standard. You need to justify that if they work really hard, they can achieve that in only 20 hours, but that can be easily done by employing a few elite workers as "certification template".
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