Tesla has changed a few of its US staff who had been let go as a part of a giant wave of layoffs earlier this yr with international employees utilizing H-1B visas, which CEO Elon Musk is now campaigning to extend.
Over the past week, Elon Musk has been selling the rise of H-1B visas, that are used to convey international employees into the US for “specialty occupations.”
Certified international employees have to 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 cause. This has led to some criticism because it offers large 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, individuals are divided on the difficulty as a result of these employees are sometimes paid lower than US employees, placing unfavorable strain 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 yr, plus an additional 20,000 for international individuals popping out of graduate packages at US universities.
Tesla has been a giant person 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 obtained important pushback from his new buddies on the proper facet of the political spectrum within the US, who see this visa as getting used to steal jobs from People.
He’s fairly passionate in regards to the problem, to say the least:
To be truthful, 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 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 yr.
We reported that roughly US 15,000 staff 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 employees than anyplace else.
Present and former Tesla staff stated that most of the laid-off US employees had been changed by international employees utilizing H-1B visas.
These claims are backed by US Division of Labor knowledge, which present that Tesla requested over 2,000 H-1B visas through the time it was shedding US employees (by way of 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 employees stated that many staff let go had been extra senior engineers with increased compensation and so they have been changed with junior engineers from international international locations 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 ought to be good makes use of for this visa, but it surely definitely may be abused. My objective is to share extra info that might clarify why Elon would need extra of this visa for his companies, and perhaps not for the proper causes.
On the core, individuals see the issue of hiring employees from different international locations who’re prepared to work for decrease pay than US employees – taking jobs from People and placing strain on total compensation within the US.
There’s definitely worth to the argument. Elon’s counterargument is that the US doesn’t have sufficient expert employees, and he wants to rent individuals from different international locations to compensate.
This argument additionally has some worth, particularly for particular sectors, like manufacturing engineering, which has grow to be much less fashionable within the US.
Nevertheless, at Tesla and with Elon, the issue is way deeper than this.
The issue stems from the employer’s weight over the employees as a sponsor of their visas. Elon is famously exhausting 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 performed this for years, and the primary motivator has been the assumption in Tesla’s mission to speed up the appearance of electrical transport with a view to curb local weather change.
Some individuals nonetheless imagine 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 more durable to make individuals imagine that Tesla’s predominant objective is to speed up the appearance of EVs when its CEO is speaking extra about Tesla turning into “probably the most precious firm on the earth” than its impression on local weather change. And let’s not overlook that he has spent an amazing quantity of effort and cash during the last yr to get deniers of the human impression on local weather change elected.
However he has discovered one other efficient strategy to encourage employees 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 large strain on the employees.
On high of it, Tesla, like many different corporations utilizing H-1B visas, tends to rent from international locations the place longer workweek are already the norm. For instance, India is already totally on a 6-day workweek.
I don’t prefer to Tesla employees killing themselves working 80 hours per week, but when they do it passionately, by alternative, for what they imagine to be an awesome mission, it’s exhausting 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 probability of immigrating as a result of they’re within the nation on a H-1B visa, that seems like exploitation to me.
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