A successful Silicon Valley firm has admitted paying staff $1.21 an hour and working them for more than 120 hours a week.
State officials got involved when an anonymous tipster alerted them to the activities of Electronics For Imaging, an international business based in the Bay Area that specializes in printing technology.
The biz had flown in eight employees from a sub-office in India for a rush job to install new computer systems in the company's Fremont headquarters last September – and their bosses forgot about US and California labor laws.
"It is unacceptable to have employees working around-the-clock, over 100 hours per week, for such substandard wages," said Susana Blanco, district director for the Wage and Hour Division in San Francisco.
"Business owners need to understand that when they bring employees here to the United States to work, they must pay them in accordance with US labor laws."
Electronics For Imaging (EFI) said that due to an "administrative error" the Indian workers were only paid their standard Indian wage, albeit with a bonus once the job was done. The minimum wage in California is $9 an hour.
Any guesses why American media didn't jump all over this news story?
Would they be able to get away with this in an open-borders system? Or was this a case of H1B employees tied down?
ReplyDeleteNo, this is the other generally known, but much more hidden type of "high tech" employee fraud, using L-1 visas to bring in people for a "limited" period of time.
ReplyDeleteOh joy, I just discovered another program that provides strong incentives for hiring foreigners, in this case students and recent graduates, Optional Practical Training, which, for the post-graduation phase, the (Bush) DHS extended in length from an evidently statutory 12 months to as many as 29, or 31 months per this muckraking item.
ReplyDeleteA bit of digging confirmed that if don't qualify as resident aliens, for which they get a 5 year exemption, they and of course the company don't have to pay Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment taxes, making them even more financially attractive.
The latter account says "OPT enables some 560,000 foreign students to obtain temporary work in their major area of study during and after completing academic programs here.", the number is increasing, and that applications are seldom denied or revoked.
What a wonderful oligarchy we have running this country :-(.