Fired University IT Workers to File Discrimination Lawsuit

Megalith

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The University of California had to have seen this coming, right? The institution fired 50 full-time tech workers and eliminated 30 contractor positions so they could be replaced with offshore labor, but the ex-employees are fighting back with a lawsuit that alleges age discrimination, as an entire age group is being replaced with a much younger one. Also argued is that the new hires fail to represent the state’s diversity in any way.

Replacing IT workers with offshore labor is common in the private sector, but almost unheard of at a state-supported, public institution. "To take a workforce that is overwhelmingly over the age of 40 and replace them with folks who are mainly in their 20s -- early 20s, in fact -- we think is age discrimination," said the IT employees' attorney, Randall Strauss, of Gwilliam Ivary Chiosso Cavalli & Brewer. The national origin discrimination claim is the result of taking a workforce "that reflects the diversity of California" and is summarily let go and is "replaced with people who come from one particular part of the world," said Strauss.
 
Lets be honest here. It is not age discrimination. It is wage discrimination.
Perhaps there is a smattering of bring in new D voters from out of country going on, and maybe touch of racism against whites/asians, but mostly wages are the reasons for this imho. Best of luck in their lawsuit though.
 
This is the issue that I have with discrimination laws, everything can be twisted to be discrimination. Some times discrimination is a good thing, but you can't actually hire or fire on that.

And in some cases like this here... it is strictly money
 
Lets be honest here. It is not age discrimination. It is wage discrimination.
Perhaps there is a smattering of bring in new D voters from out of country going on, and maybe touch of racism against whites/asians, but mostly wages are the reasons for this imho. Best of luck in their lawsuit though.

Probably, but with a lawsuit you take the angles most likely to succeed and it sounds like they fucked up and replaced a bunch of 40+ year olds with young people. That's the cutoff in US law for age discrimination. Even if your intent wasn't to get rid of all your older people if that's what you did, you can still get in trouble. Same shit if you went and decided to cut costs and just happened to fire all the women that worked for you. You'd get in shit for gender discrimination.
 
Same shit if you went and decided to cut costs and just happened to fire all the women that worked for you. You'd get in shit for gender discrimination.
Not to mention that wouldn't make any economic sense, since women do the same work for 77 cents on the dollar, from what I read at Huffington Post. Seems more likely the overpaid men would all be fired, and unemployable in our "bottom line" cut-throat economy.
 
Lets be honest here. It is not age discrimination. It is wage discrimination.

But from a lawyers point of view it's muuuuuuuuuuuuuuch easier to prove (even if untrue) in a court of law, and much more effective, to use the age discrimination argument. Imagine having to build a case as ambiguous and vague as wage discrimination.
 
But from a lawyers point of view it's muuuuuuuuuuuuuuch easier to prove (even if untrue) in a court of law, and much more effective, to use the age discrimination argument. Imagine having to build a case as ambiguous and vague as wage discrimination.

Should be fairly cut and dried for the plaintiffs. Previous wages are on record at the state and federal level (tax returns, SSI, etc), and so are the wages and fees being paid to the new contractor . Not to mention the university publicly touting a $30m savings over five years when this change was first announced.

That said, cost-cutting ain't illegal in and of itself. Age discrimination is.
 
And in some cases like this here... it is strictly money

And most of these people are not going to be able to find a job making anything near what they are currently making (including benefits).
Their best option may be to leave the state, just like so many companies that are leaving.
 
Should be fairly cut and dried for the plaintiffs. Previous wages are on record at the state and federal level (tax returns, SSI, etc), and so are the wages and fees being paid to the new contractor . Not to mention the university publicly touting a $30m savings over five years when this change was first announced.

That said, cost-cutting ain't illegal in and of itself. Age discrimination is.

That's what they said initially with the DOJ when they should have gone after the speculators in Wall Street after the housing bubble crisis. And you reinforced my point by saying by cost cutting not being illegal because there's so few precedent cases where it occurred... and they're mostly involved with women. Which unfortunately, won't matter much in this current situation. Again, what's obvious in our faces is one thing, to prove that in a court case under a jury who is hand pick from both sides, and will mostly be under the dark in terms of understanding the nuances of the how the game is played, the waters suddenly become extremely muddy. If I was a betting man, they're going to lose this case simply because these types of trials rarely go in their favor. I'm simply being honest and impartial here, because I'd really like for them to win but reading the the pre-face of the case and they're already in an uphill battle. I'd love to be proven wrong.
 
LOL Liberal Californian's are getting a reality check... otherwise known as a bitch slap.

They won't get anywhere with this, and it's rather comical they are just realizing that globalization isn't all that it's cracked up to be.
 
I've been on both sides of this issue, I basically believe it's up to individuals to manage change and find a new path regardless of the reasons. If you find you're being replaced by cheaper labor, you can find a new job that pays the same elsewhere or negotiate a new lower rate if you want to stay. I closed a lot of US offices not because of labor costs because of US red tape and the cost of dealing with it.
 
National origin discrimination, now there's a new one I haven't heard before. If that one sticks, that could leave to some seriously big precedents for the future of "outsourcing"


That said, why don't they outsource the entire administration department? President of the school, vice presidents, the whole lot of 6 figure salaries, surely you can get someone who can do the job just as good for a cheaper salary.... oh no but when it's one of those suits high salaries and huge retirement packages need to be done to "be competitive" with the market. I swear it's a class discrimination lawsuit that's necessary!
\
 
So they fired all the American workers and replaced them with H1B's.

My advisor thinks I am crazy to change my degree plan to civil engineering...

me too.

8d0a6bcde064c9704b6cfa04b8c1241c.jpg


coming to a city near you

right when you get replaced with an h1b
 
I don't get the lack of respect in the IT field. Same with customer service. These companies want to educate and or sell products to you, but they down want to employee the people in the country they are marketing too.
 
Good, I hope UC gets their ass handed to them. Outsourcing (overseas/H1B) these types of jobs is bullshit.

The H1B is supposed to be used to replace jobs where there is a lack of qualified candidates. Yet they let go of every qualified candidate... So clearly there's not a lack of them.
 
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Why are people talking about H1-B here? UC outsourced, they didn't bring in H1-Bs.
 
me too.

8d0a6bcde064c9704b6cfa04b8c1241c.jpg


coming to a city near you

right when you get replaced with an h1b

I can honestly say that Comcast and Frontier aren't far from that now. The guy about 6 houses down from me could hang himself while mowing if not careful due to the Comcast wire hanging about 3 feet from the ground. Frontier is similar a few towns north with many places being huge balls of wires that I can't figure out how they even work.

Why are people talking about H1-B here? UC outsourced, they didn't bring in H1-Bs.

People are too stupid to realize the difference.
 
I can honestly say that Comcast and Frontier aren't far from that now. The guy about 6 houses down from me could hang himself while mowing if not careful due to the Comcast wire hanging about 3 feet from the ground. Frontier is similar a few towns north with many places being huge balls of wires that I can't figure out how they even work.



People are too stupid to realize the difference.
It is the same damn thing. I was just using H1-B as example.
 
Why are people talking about H1-B here? UC outsourced, they didn't bring in H1-Bs.

And that's the biggest fraud being committed with the H1-B visa program.
While it's illegal to fire American workers and replace them H1-B workers, it's legal if you simply outsource to a company hiring H1-B Visa holders.
That's a loop-hole that needs to be closed, and closing it would eliminate most of the abuse.
It should be illegal to bring in H1-B visa holders to be hired for contract or outsourced work.
 
I don't get the lack of respect in the IT field. Same with customer service. These companies want to educate and or sell products to you, but they down want to employee the people in the country they are marketing too.

It's because US culture generally can't see beyond "right now", in front of their face.

IT and customer service are costs of business, they are not assets or any sort of investment into making money. They are costs draining from their margins.

Customers generally think the same way, lowest cost wins for most everything excluding all other forms of "value". (yet many still complain about quality imagine that).
 
This business as usual. If they can give the work to cheaper labour then companies will.
Even if it means lower quality of work.
Universities are a monopoly it's not like anyone can up and quit because their IT sucks.
 
I hope this goes somewhere, the decision of the U to do this is out of this world. This isn't the first I've heard of this particular matter. The entire department is being outsourced? That's unreal for such a department, especially an edu!
 
It's because US culture generally can't see beyond "right now", in front of their face.

IT and customer service are costs of business, they are not assets or any sort of investment into making money. They are costs draining from their margins.

Customers generally think the same way, lowest cost wins for most everything excluding all other forms of "value". (yet many still complain about quality imagine that).

Once you understand the nature of Capitalism and how it functions, it makes complete sense. It's effecting every aspect of society from foreign policy, healthcare, philosophy, and now education. We have now become marginalized to commodities to be traded like cattle and other goods, all for the sake of profit. Morals and ethics isn't profitable anymore unfortunately, and there's nothing to indicate, to me at least, that things are going to change for the better in terms of the IT environment
 
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When I first heard about this I thought it was glorious. They SJW'ed the SJW's

Heres the other part I found interesting.

Approximately 50 full-time university employees lost their jobs, but another 30 contractor positions were cut as well......The university had argued that its outsourcing decisions will save it some $50 million over five years.

That comes out to $125,000 a year per position.....and that's saved, not total. Also, as a matter of principal, the school is saying it's ok to exploit people if it saves you lots of money, which I think has some fundamental issues.
 
When I first heard about this I thought it was glorious. They SJW'ed the SJW's

Heres the other part I found interesting.



That comes out to $125,000 a year per position.....and that's saved, not total. Also, as a matter of principal, the school is saying it's ok to exploit people if it saves you lots of money, which I think has some fundamental issues.
Benefits, costs of upkeep of equipment.

But still that number seems way high.

Would be funny if UC was known for IT degrees, only to fire their IT and go over seas.
 
When I first heard about this I thought it was glorious. They SJW'ed the SJW's

Heres the other part I found interesting.



That comes out to $125,000 a year per position.....and that's saved, not total. Also, as a matter of principal, the school is saying it's ok to exploit people if it saves you lots of money, which I think has some fundamental issues.
When discussing government jobs, $125K means $50-65K in salary and another $60K in benefits.
 
Benefits, costs of upkeep of equipment.

When discussing government jobs, $125K means $50-65K in salary and another $60K in benefits.

You are probably both right, but it still points out the level of exploitation the college is engaging in. They are either going to hire the same or more number of people with severely reduced compensation or they are going to put a much larger workload on a smaller number of people.

As a publicly funded college system, especially coming from the state that is so proud of how much money they make over other states, I see it as sending the wrong message to students. Working smarter and more efficient is a hall mark of American ingenuity.....but taking a shit on 3rd world countries.....actually....that might be a hallmark too.
 
That comes out to $125,000 a year per position.....and that's saved, not total. Also, as a matter of principal, the school is saying it's ok to exploit people if it saves you lots of money, which I think has some fundamental issues.

It is OK to exploit people if it makes you or saves you money. Obviously you weren't paying attention.

No I'm not joking about how the world actually works. I see absolutely no reason to pay someone triple the funds to do the same work. Nada.
 
It is OK to exploit people if it makes you or saves you money. Obviously you weren't paying attention.

No I'm not joking about how the world actually works. I see absolutely no reason to pay someone triple the funds to do the same work. Nada.

Can't spell under-employed without employed. And that's good enough for the stats.
 
It is the same damn thing. I was just using H1-B as example.

No, outsourcing to a company in another country and hiring H1-B visa holders are not the same thing. H1-B visa holders would imply that the people are here in the USA doing the work. Outsourcing to another county means that the people are still in their home country doing the work.

The first thing they did was move all the servers off site and put them into a Dell datacenter in Washington. This means that nobody needs to be at the campus to manage these physical servers so now a person in India or a person in SF both are in the same position as nether have physical access to the servers and are only managing virtual machines remotely. They then moved desktop support for applications, server and network management, and software development to India. Again things that can be done remotely in many cases. Given that it didn't sound like they fired the entire staff, but instead only fired a good part of it, they probably kept just enough people on staff to be able to handle physical desktop support and to install software, and to take care of physical network needs. From how it sounds the stuff that was moved to India shouldn't require a person in the USA to do any of it, so I don't think H1-B visas will be used by anyone. Not that I agree with anything that they did, just saying that it doesn't sound like that stuff required actual people being at the school to do anymore. "Jon" from New Delhi can change a password just as easily from his office in India as Jon from SoCal can sitting in an office at the campus IT department.

Sadly this is the way that many companies are going. I know a lot of people in my area that get their IT support from somebody 3+ hours away, at that point wouldn't matter if the company is 3 hours or 3000 miles away. If they are doing the work remotely they can do it from anywhere with internet connection. At least having somebody bitch to you about not being able to get onsite due to being 3000 miles away would be a tad better to listen to than somebody bitching to me about not wanting to have to drive 200 miles to support their customer's failing equipment because I don't understand how long of a drive that is and how much of their day is wasted getting there and back just to take care of one issue. Not by much, but some at least. My caring meter would hit about .2 out of 10 instead of the 0 these people get from me now.
 
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