Haloweenie
Haloweenie
Date: Sunday, October 31, 2004 1:25 PM
JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
October 31, 2004. No. 1118
A portrait of Peter Harrison, president of Britannia in Fort Wayne. He
is shortage shouting that talented people won't move to Fort Wayne,
Indiana. Waaaaaaaaaaaa!
.----------.
/ .-. .-. \
/ | | | | \
\ `-' `-' _/
/\ .--. / |
\ | / / / /
/ | `--' /\ \
/`-------' \ \
Peter Harrison whines and gripes that there is a shortage of talented
engineers that want to move to Fort Wayne, Indiana to work at
Britannia. He claims he pays "competitive wages" but the LCA database
proves otherwise. One LCA signed by him for a programmer was for a
paltry $40,000 (probably for a guru that can walk on water). It
probably never occurred to Harrison that if he paid above average
salaries somebody might be willing to be his neighbor -- on second
thought, it might take way above average salaries for someone to want
to live anywhere close to him!
I'll bet that skinflint won't even pay relocation fees for those
desperate enough to work there. Harrison sounds like a brat having a
temper tantrum when he says that unless the government allows him to
import more H-1Bs he will outsource large chunks of his company to
India. If I was his parent I would give him a one-way ticket to
Bangalore and tell him not to come back to this country until he has a
better attitude.
How much you wanna bet that Harrison gives out company equities instead
of Snickers bars to the few kids who dare to come to his mansion for
trick-or-treat?
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/business/10004359.htm
Posted on Sun, Oct. 24, 2004
Visa limits hit home for local company
By Urvaksh Karkaria
The Journal Gazette
Dean Musser Jr./The Journal Gazette
Jeff Jones, left, and Brandon Tobias, work at Britannia, a software
company that is losing business because of limited H1-B visas.
Peter Harrisons Fort Wayne software company is losing business - and
its not because of shoddy products or lousy management. Hes
putting the blame on Uncle Sams pinstriped shoulders.
Unable to find adequately trained workers in the United States willing
to relocate, the president of Britannia Inc. is looking to import
foreign talent.
But that effort has hit a wall because of the limited number of H1-B
visas the government grants to foreigners in specialty professions such
as architecture, engineering, medicine and computer programming that
allow them to work here.
Consider this: Congress set a cap of 65,000 such visas per fiscal year.
That quota was filled on Oct. 1, the first day of fiscal year 2005.
"We have to wait until April 2005 to even apply for a visa to be issued
in October 2005," Harrison said.
But the businessman cant wait that long if his company is to develop
new products and maintain market share in a rapidly evolving industry.
Britannia has "tried all summer" to find qualified Americans, Harrison
said.
"If we find a qualified one, they dont want to come to Fort Wayne."
The company pays competitive wages for the Midwest region, he said.
Congress last raised the cap on H1-B visas in fiscal 2000 ending Sept.
30, 2000, when the country was enjoying a technology-powered boom.
The H1-B worker limit rose to 195,000, but it fell back to 65,000 in
fiscal 2004 - a decrease of more than 65 percent.
Britannia, which employs about 50, develops and hosts accounting,
e-commerce and other software for about 1,000 small businesses
nationwide. The company runs the software at its building in Fort
Wayne, and businesses log in over the Internet and use the software.
Britannia, which has three of its 16 engineers on H1-B visas, is
looking to hire two more engineers.
The shortage of manpower is slowing the introduction of new products,
which Harrison said could lead to more local hiring.
"The company currently has 40 percent of the market that we are in,"
Harrison said.
"With the new products we could easily get that up (to) 50 (percent)."
Instead, Britannia is likely to struggle to maintain existing market
share because it cant find the talent to launch new products,
Harrison said.
"We have lost some business to competitors," he said.
The shortage of H1-B visas is "very bad for business" and could hurt
American competitiveness in the long run, said Tom Richwine, president
of Immigration Support Services, a Mechanicsburg, Pa.-based company
that processes work visas for companies.
"As Americans, we are not developing the number of people we need in
the hard sciences and math programs," Richwine said. "So kids are
coming out of high school (often) ill-equipped to take the serious
scientific courses necessary to go into a career in engineering (or)
computer sciences."
And not being able to find the talent - be it American or foreign -
will be competitively disadvantageous for U.S. companies such as
Britannia.
"It means (U.S. companies) are not going to be able to grow the way
they would like to," Richwine said. "It means they are not going to be
able to expand in areas that they would like to expand - either in new
technologies or in new geographic areas."
In the final leg of the presidential elections, the issue of
outsourcing American jobs is commanding impressive rhetoric from both
candidates.
Although the idea of limiting entry to foreign workers might appear to
protect jobs for Americans, Harrison says the opposite could happen.
The lack of an adequately skilled local and foreign work force could
further accelerate off-shoring where companies move operations
overseas.
"I dont think you are going to protect against outsourcing by
limiting the access to qualified engineers," Harrison said. "You are
going to do the reverse."
And thats no rhetoric.
"Weve seriously considered outsourcing in the last three months,"
Harrison said. "The company has considered taking large chunks of our
business out of this country to India because we cannot get work done
here."
Hesitancy by Congress to raise the visa cap is yet "another one of
those political footballs that gets kicked around," Harrison said.
"Theres a lot of noise being made about outsourcing," he said.
"Part of the politicians backlash to the row about outsourcing is to
cut down on the visas because then they can be seen to be doing
something."
Because H1-B visas are typically issued to workers in high-tech and
science-based fields, Britannias plight is an exception in northeast
Indiana, which is still more Rust Belt than Silicon Valley.
But that could change as regional economic development officials work
overtime to attract those high-tech, high-paying jobs that are going
unfilled because of the visa shortage.
It is essential for businesses to attract foreign talent to keep
growing and remain competitive, said Mike Fritsch, president of Zoom
Information Systems.
"There is and will continue to be an ever-increasing demand for
software talent," Fritsch said.
"If we dont take the talented people around the world, someone else
will."
The Fort Wayne-based transportation software company employs six and is
looking to add about 10 software development engineers in the next
year.
"It is hard to find good software talent in Fort Wayne right now," he
said. Like Harrison, Fritsch said limiting foreign work visas might
drive U.S. companies to move work outside the countrys borders.
"With the (work) visa shortage, its more likely that a company such
as ours would look to go overseas to get software done," Fritsch said.
"If the good talents not here then, ... you are forced to possibly
go overseas to get that done."
TK Herman, partner at Fort Wayne-based Aptera Software, agrees.
"Theres a lot of talented people out there," Herman said.
"As a business owner you want to be able to pull not just from a local
region or a national region but from everywhere."
The software development firm cant find adequately trained talent
locally and is finding it hard to attract talent to the area.
"People dont want to come to Fort Wayne," he said.
"They dont know anything about Fort Wayne."
Instead of importing foreign workers - a relatively expensive process,
mired in red tape, Herman said - he would rather export the work.
"Were a small business," he said, "and we look for (cost effective)
ways to (get the work done)."
Warsaw-based DePuy Orthopaedics Inc. has not had any trouble so far
getting work visas for foreign employees at its Warsaw operations, said
Earle Hanlin, vice president of human resources.
"We have never had a work visa denied," he said.
"It has not had, at least to date, an adverse impact on us."
DePuy, a multinational owned by health care giant Johnson & Johnson,
employs 24 foreign workers, most of whom are on H1-B visas.
Those employees, who account for 2 percent of the local workforce, are
in the engineering, science and management areas.
Foreign workers bring diverse expertise and global thinking toward the
development of products and in customizing them for a global audience,
Hanlin said.
And because DePuy operates around the world, management must have a
global approach to business and diversity of thought, he said.
Having global operations also allows DePuy to better withstand the
labor squeeze that Britannia is contending with.
DePuy can hire the foreign talent it cant find in the U.S. at its
overseas operations in Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, Japan and
Switzerland, Hanlin said.
"Certainly it could be an inconvenience for us," Hanlin said regarding
the H1-B visa shortage.
"But we have research and development capabilities in a number of
countries around the world."
Reporter Urvaksh Karkaria of The Journal Gazette is on an H1-Bvisa. The
Associated Press contributed to this story.
About H1-B visas
H1-B visas, which are good for up to six years, are granted to
foreigners in specialty professions such as architecture, engineering,
medicine and computer programming.
Under the H1-B program, U.S. employers must pay foreign workers the
prevailing wage for their job fields and show that qualified U.S.
workers are not being passed over. The foreign worker must have at
least a bachelors degree or the equivalent.
www.ZaZona.com
Support this Newsletter and ZaZona.com by donating:
www.zazona.com/Donations.htm
To Subscribe, Unsubscribe or to view the Archive go to:
http://www.zazona.com/shameh1b/JobDestructionNews.htm
Back to archives