Tesla has changed a few of its US workers who had been let go as a part of a giant wave of layoffs earlier this yr with international staff 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 staff into the US for “specialty occupations.”
Certified international staff 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 preserve employment on the visa sponsor to retain the work visa. The employee must depart the nation if the employment ends for no matter cause. This has led to some criticism because it offers super energy to the employer and may result in a contemporary model of indentured servitude.
Whereas there are apparent advantages to bringing expert staff into the US, individuals are divided on the difficulty as a result of these staff are sometimes paid lower than US staff, placing destructive stress on compensation, particularly within the tech business, on prime of the ethical questions on holding visas over the heads of international staff.
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 yr, plus an additional 20,000 for international individuals popping out of graduate applications at US universities.
Tesla has been a giant consumer of these visas, and its CEO, Elon Musk, has been utilizing his newfound political affect to advertise rising the cap of H-1B visas. He acquired important pushback from his new mates on the best aspect of the political spectrum within the US, who see this visa as getting used to steal jobs from Individuals.
He’s fairly passionate in regards to 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 had 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 staff reached out to Electrek to disclose that Tesla ramped up its use of H-1B visas to interchange US staff it let go throughout a wave of layoffs earlier this yr.
We reported that roughly US 15,000 workers had been let go at Tesla round April 2024. Each division was affected, however the layoffs had been concentrated in Texas and California, the place Tesla has extra staff than anyplace else.
Present and former Tesla workers stated that lots of the laid-off US staff had been changed by international staff 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 staff (through Reddit):
Once more, there’s a cap of 65,000 visas for all the US yearly, and Tesla alone tried to recover from 3% of them.
Tesla staff stated that many workers let go had been extra senior engineers with larger 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 like there needs to be good makes use of for this visa, nevertheless it actually might be abused. My aim is to share extra data that might clarify why Elon would need extra of this visa for his companies, and perhaps not for the best causes.
On the core, individuals see the issue of hiring staff from different nations who’re prepared to work for decrease pay than US staff – taking jobs from Individuals 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 staff, and he wants to rent individuals from different nations to compensate.
This argument additionally has some worth, particularly for particular sectors, like manufacturing engineering, which has change into much less in style within the US.
Nevertheless, 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 arduous on staff, and he doesn’t like the normal 40-hour workweek. He typically pushes Tesla workers to work 60 to 80 hours per week.
Many Tesla workers have fortunately accomplished this for years, and the principle motivator has been the idea in Tesla’s mission to speed up the arrival of electrical transport in an effort to curb local weather change.
Some individuals 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 changing into more durable to make individuals consider that Tesla’s principal aim is to speed up the arrival of EVs when its CEO is speaking extra about Tesla changing into “essentially the most invaluable firm on the planet” than its influence on local weather change. And let’s not neglect that he has spent an incredible quantity of effort and cash over the past yr to get deniers of the human influence on local weather change elected.
However he has discovered one other efficient method to encourage staff to work more durable and for longer hours: maintain a visa over their head.
The character of the H-1B visa being hooked up to your employer places super stress on the employees.
On prime 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 staff 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 arduous 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 looks like exploitation to me.
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