Hewlett Packard announced this week that the company plans to cut about 10% of its workforce, roughly around 30,000 American workers, while expanding the use of H-1B foreign worker visas. HP Chairman and CEO Meg Whitman said, "We've done a significant amount of work over the past few years to take costs out and simplify processes and these final actions will eliminate the need for any future corporate restructuring."
This new set of layoffs comes as an addition to the 54,000 jobs HP has already cut, mostly affecting American workers. Yet, HP continues to hire foreign workers through the H-1B visa program. According to the myvisajobs.com website: "Hewlett-Packard filed 2,668 labor condition applications for H1-B visa and 815 labor certifications for green card from fiscal year 2011 to 2014. Hewlett-Packard Company was ranked 30 among all visa sponsors."
The Obama administration has expanded the H-1B visa program by granting work-permits to the spouses of these foreign workers. There are around 650,000 H-1B workers currently residing in the United States.
Presidential candidate and former HP CEO, Carly Fiorina, warned that the H1-B visa program was different from what was available 10 years ago, when she was in charge of the tech company, and that it is now being abused by corporate organizations to displace American workers. In June she commented, "It's become an issue where it appears that some companies that are abusing that program and asking American workers to train H1-B visa replacements so they can lower wages."
When asked today about this new round of job lay-offs she responded, "Meg Whitman is there, she has a strategy that she is pursing." She also commented on how hard it is as a chief executive to tell someone they no longer have a job and that it is a hard time in the technology industry right now.
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