Tesla has changed a few of its US staff who have been let go as a part of an enormous wave of layoffs earlier this 12 months with international employees utilizing H-1B visas, which CEO Elon Musk is now campaigning to extend.
During the last week, Elon Musk has been selling the rise of H-1B visas, that are used to deliver international employees into the US for “specialty occupations.”
Certified international employees should be sponsored by an organization to get the visa, which lasts three years, extendable to 6 years, after which the holder must reapply.
The visa holder should keep employment on the visa sponsor to retain the work visa. The employee must depart the nation if the employment ends for no matter purpose. This has led to some criticism because it offers great energy to the employer and might result in a contemporary model of indentured servitude.
Whereas there are apparent advantages to bringing expert employees into the US, persons are divided on the difficulty as a result of these employees are sometimes paid lower than US employees, placing destructive stress on compensation, particularly within the tech trade, on high of the ethical questions on holding visas over the heads of international employees.
That’s why the US Congress has mandated a 65,000 visa cap limiting the variety of H-1B visas that may be issued every fiscal 12 months, plus an additional 20,000 for international folks popping out of graduate applications at US universities.
Tesla has been an enormous person of these visas, and its CEO, Elon Musk, has been utilizing his newfound political affect to advertise growing the cap of H-1B visas. He acquired important pushback from his new mates on the best facet of the political spectrum within the US, who see this visa as getting used to steal jobs from People.
He’s fairly passionate concerning the difficulty, to say the least:
To be honest, Musk didn’t come to the US on a H-1B visa. He got here on a pupil visa, and later, his personal brother admitted that they have been unlawful immigrants within the early days of launching their Zip2 startup within the US.
Tesla’s use of H-1B visas
Over the previous few days, a number of present and former Tesla employees reached out to Electrek to disclose that Tesla ramped up its use of H-1B visas to interchange US employees it let go throughout a wave of layoffs earlier this 12 months.
We reported that roughly US 15,000 staff have been let go at Tesla round April 2024. Each division was affected, however the layoffs have been concentrated in Texas and California, the place Tesla has extra employees than anyplace else.
Present and former Tesla staff stated that most of the laid-off US employees have been changed by international employees utilizing H-1B visas.
These claims are backed by US Division of Labor information, which present that Tesla requested over 2,000 H-1B visas in the course of the time it was shedding US employees (through Reddit):
Once more, there’s a cap of 65,000 visas for your complete US yearly, and Tesla alone tried to recover from 3% of them.
Tesla employees stated that many staff let go have been extra senior engineers with greater compensation and so they have been changed with junior engineers from international nations at a decrease pay.
Electrek’s Take
To be clear, I’m not taking a stance on H-1B right here. It looks as if there needs to be good makes use of for this visa, but it surely actually could be abused. My purpose is to share extra data that would clarify why Elon would need extra of this visa for his companies, and perhaps not for the best causes.
On the core, folks see the issue of hiring employees from different nations who’re keen to work for decrease pay than US employees – taking jobs from People and placing stress on general compensation within the US.
There’s actually worth to the argument. Elon’s counterargument is that the US doesn’t have sufficient expert employees, and he wants to rent folks from different nations to compensate.
This argument additionally has some worth, particularly for particular sectors, like manufacturing engineering, which has develop into much less well-liked within the US.
Nonetheless, at Tesla and with Elon, the issue is far deeper than this.
The issue stems from the employer’s weight over the employees as a sponsor of their visas. Elon is famously onerous on employees, and he doesn’t like the standard 40-hour workweek. He typically pushes Tesla staff to work 60 to 80 hours per week.
Many Tesla staff have fortunately completed this for years, and the primary motivator has been the idea in Tesla’s mission to speed up the appearance of electrical transport with the intention to curb local weather change.
Some folks nonetheless consider on this mission, however Elon has eroded it over the previous few years by shifting concentrate on self-driving and advocating for eradicating EV incentives within the US. It’s turning into tougher to make folks consider that Tesla’s foremost purpose is to speed up the appearance of EVs when its CEO is speaking extra about Tesla turning into “probably the most helpful firm on this planet” than its affect on local weather change. And let’s not neglect that he has spent an incredible quantity of effort and cash during the last 12 months to get deniers of the human affect on local weather change elected.
However he has discovered one other efficient method to inspire employees to work tougher and for longer hours: maintain a visa over their head.
The character of the H-1B visa being hooked up to your employer places great stress on the employees.
On high of it, Tesla, like many different corporations utilizing H-1B visas, tends to rent from nations the place longer workweek are already the norm. For instance, India is already totally on a 6-day workweek.
I don’t wish to Tesla employees killing themselves working 80 hours per week, but when they do it passionately, by alternative, for what they consider to be an amazing mission, it’s onerous to argue towards that. It’s their alternative.
But when they do it as a result of they need the “American dream” and they’re afraid that getting let go will kill or decelerate their likelihood of immigrating as a result of they’re within the nation on a H-1B visa, that appears like exploitation to me.
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