CNN's Dumbest Business Moments

Date: Thursday, January 25, 2007 7:04 PM

<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1628 -- 1/25/2007 >>>>>

CNN has a hilarious series of web pages about the dumbest business moments
of 2006. Some of them have videos which are even funnier. You just gotta
love their bouncing dunce cap.

You can see the complete archive at:

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/101dumbest/2007/index.html

One of them that really caught my eye was #77. Bank of America got on their
list for forcing their employees to train their H-1B replacements. The text
from the CNN webpage is copied below, but it doesn't answer the most
obvious question -- why was it stupid for the BofA to force their American
employees to train their H-1B replacements?

On the surface it doesn't seem that what BofA did was dumb at all because
they got away with it. Replacing those American workers saved BofA a lot of
money on wages and you can bet the managers that concocted the scheme
probably got bonuses or promotions.

So why didn't anything happen to BofA when so many of their employees were
replaced by nonimmigrant visa holders? For one thing, BofA was smart enough
to threaten to withhold severance payments unless the American employees
trained their H-1B replacements, so most of those people would be afraid to
complain even if they could. The sad fact is that there is nothing to
complain about because the H-1B and L-1 visa programs allow employers to
get away with this type of behavior. Neither visa requires that employers
give hiring priority to U.S. citizens and legal residents so BofA can get
away with this while avoiding legal problems. What happened at BofA is a
sorry spectacle that is playing out all across the country.

The CNN answer to the question can be found on the video. They discuss how
humiliating it must have been for BofA employees to train their
replacements but fortunately that wasn't the only argument. Mention was
made about how easy it would be for the foreign programmers to sabotoge the
banking software -- a concern that very few in the media or in government
acknowledge. The biggest and most glaring weakness in the video is that
nobody questioned the wisdom of forcing America's high-tech workers into
unemployment.

To read more about what happened at BofA and to find out more about the
legality of what they did, you can view the newsletter at the archive by
going to this link:

http://www.zazona.com/NewsArchive/List.aspx
"2006-06-10 BofA Train your replacement or else"

I recommend this link to read the newsletter because it is formatted in
HTML.
http://www.eng-i.com/E-News1497.asp

FINDING THE VIDEO: They don't make finding the link to the video easy,
which is kind of dumb! Use the link above to get to the video and press the
link that says "Business...It's 'Dumbtastic!'", or use the link below:

http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/video/business/2007/01/23/b2.101.dumb.northwest.bofa.cnn.cnn&source=money

HINT: You will have to copy and paste the link together.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/biz2/0701/gallery.101dumbest_2007/77.html

77. Bank of America
In related news, the Department of Corrections has announced that death-row
inmates will now be required to pedal stationary bikes to power Old
Sparky...
After Bank of America announces plans to outsource 100 tech support jobs
from the San Francisco Bay Area to India, the American workers are told
that they must train their own replacements in order to receive their
severance payments.

Newsletter Homepage:
http://www.JobDestruction.com/shameh1b/JobDestructionNews.htm

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