Background
In 2000, as part of a struggle involving legislation to raise the cap on H-1B visas, members of the Congressional Black Caucus hoped to include amendments that would have required the high-tech companies to hire and train more U.S. minority workers. But in October of that year, they were shut out of the process in a manner that one member referred to as a betrayal. These events are outlined in an earlier diary Minorities, Money and Miller.
As noted, Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich., was a sponsor of the legislation to raise the cap on H-1B visas. Abraham was one of the Republican recipients of Miller's campaign contributions about whom Miller, who himself strangely enough self-identifies as a lifelong Democrat, said, "I'm doing everything I can to get him re-elected."
The year 2003
In 2003 Sandra Guy wrote about some of the consequences of this type of legislation when coupled with the dot-com bust. She interviewed Mell Monroe, who had been a succesful IT sales recruiter for jobs at large IT firms including IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft. Mr. Monroe specialized in recruiting African-American and Latino workers.
According to Monroe, demand for his services dwindled beginning in late 1999 with the burst of the dot-com bubble. This was before the 2000 cap increase that Harris Miller and Spencer Abraham worked so hard to get passed. Companies ceased asking for minority candidates in 1999, according to Monroe.
"Affirmative action is not as common or as prevalent in the technology industry," Monroe said. "The African-American sales professional or tech-support specialist (are first) when it comes to being laid off."
Guy referenced a study whose numbers supported Monroe's observations.
A newly released study issued by the Coalition for Fair Employment in Silicon Valley, a group of black executives, found that nine high-tech fields employed 211,000 black workers out of 3.8 million, or 5.5 percent, compared with the general African-American labor force percentage of 10.6 percent.The coalition noted that other information-based, technology-driven industries, such as telecommunications and radio and television broadcasting, employ far higher percentages of blacks--13.9 percent and 15.4 percent, respectively.
A study by the Information Technology Association of America found that the percentages of minorities and women in the IT work force fell between 1996 and 2002. The study was based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This was the "Silicon Ceiling 4" study. According to the report, on the positive side African Americans were increasingly owning their own technology companies.
The report also addressed the visa controversy. According to critics the companies exploited workers by sponsoring them for green cards--a process that can take years. If the workers complain, the companies can deport them.
At that time, ITAA president Harris Miller claimed that he had seen no data linking offshoring and outsourcing and the problems of minority hiring in IT.
Paradigm flip
Why did the ITAA willingly publish the results of a report vividly illustrating the failure to include minorities on the part of the very industry it represented?
Keep in mind that the real value of visa workers to industry was their willingness to work more for less. With increasing unemployment rates and layoffs, the worker shortage rationale could no longer be marketed, and another excuse was desperately needed.
Hence the shift to the poorly trained American worker as excuse. The blame for minority underrepresentation in IT was placed at the feet of the American educational system. The underrepresentation was not merely hushed or glossed over, it was actually marketed to help reinforce the poorly trained American worker idea. In the repackaged form, not only was America failing to train workers, it was shamefully failing minorities most of all.
"We need to do a better job of training and retooling U.S. workers' skills so we can continue to have the world's best work force," said Miller.
"There is a huge effort in this country by employers to respond to competition by driving down wages," said Eileen Appelbaum, director of the Center for Labor and Work at Rutgers University."We are importing the services of engineers, call center workers and computer programmers. It increases our imports and makes our trade deficit worse," she said. "I think this is the single biggest threat to the U.S. economy today."
Miller and the IT industry have taken cover repeatedly under our education system, and Miller was chastised in a Senate Democratic Policy Committee Hearing for doing so.
The Present
"Bad citizen" industries are eventually met with legislated regulations that they don't want. By taking the offense and alleging a failed education system as the root of the problem, the IT industry claims that going offshore or importing cheap labor is a necessity. And the only way that the industry was able to maintain its "good citizen" status was to call for increased government funding for training and retooling. The high end IT jobs can stay overseas. The call center jobs, or a portion of them, can come home to depressed areas with high unemployment rates where trainees are eager to take these job at lower pay.
Harris Miller's educational ideas as a candidate follow as a smooth extension of this agenda. He wants the government to "pour money" into this kind of training. He can market himself as having a particular concern for economically depressed communities and minorities, and appear to be a "good citizen." His interest in humans as labor commodity is masked as compassion. But this is a response to a post dot-com economy, not a fundamental change of heart.
There's just one problem with this approach. This is an industry that has demonstrated gross indifference to the plight of American workers and minorities. They talked about shortages, and we paid a price with depressed wages. They talked about free and global economies, and we paid the price with layoffs and unemployment. Now they talk about hiring at home, and we are to subsidize them with tax dollars in training people up for their needs.
We can do this without subsidizing these bad citizen companies. Econ majors can flesh out details, but this can be done with more Buy America programs, with penalties for offshoring, and more equitable tax structures. Training programs can be put into place, we can have more job security, and more of us can have insurance.
Why reward the entities that got us in this mess in the first place? We can do this without Harris Miller and the corporate welfare horse he rode in on.
[1] August 13, 2003: Chicago Sun-Times. Percentage of minorities in tech lower than in other fields, Sandra Guy.
Am I going to meet you this weekend to march with Jim?
Corporatations and business allies such as Harris Miller have torn down the ladders of upward mobility of all Americans and this is noted by African-Americans, among others. I have had correspondence with Americans of other Indian and hispanic ethnicity as well. They are similarly outraged that their opportunity to work for the "American Dream" has been stolen by selfish, narrow elites in business and politics. Harris Miller has been identified, by name, in a number of such conversations I've had over the past 3 years.
The ITAA report is worse than I had suspected, i.e., a CYA shape-public-opinion piece. The proportion of women in IT moved from 22% to 22.3% from 1996 to 2002 and they think that's good.
It is full of logical fallacies. Like this (the repeated "are" is from the original):
Why are women and minorities are earning fewer computer sciences and engineering degrees than their white male counterparts? An information gap about the necessary academic requirements for different IT degrees may be the reason. For example, math is the language of engineering, and yet many students are simply not taking enough math and science courses in the middle and high schools to prepare them for rigorous college degree courses that are requisite for the IT profession.
The explanation is about STUDENTS not minorities or women. It doesn't work logically, because the statement applies equally to the white male counterparts. Then they say that teachers and guidance counselors may have inaccurate information, etc.
The report mentions corporate leadership as a solution, and 3 pages of a 22 page report describes various best practice diversity programs. Several of those mentioned are Northrup Grumman, an ITAA member.
The report is bulked up with well-known information to anyone in the field who has a passing interest in diversity.
There are a few other bits of interest, but I'm sure you get the idea.