Cigna Replacing Chattanooga Workers With L-1s

Date: Friday, October 10, 2003 12:48 PM

JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

This story was published in January but somehow it slipped under the
radar screen. The article is worth reading because Cigna candidly
admits that they are replacing Chattanooga workers with foreign
replacements.

A "Times of India" article appeared 6 months later saying that the
visas Cigna uses are L-1s. Daryl Buffenstein, the immigration lawyer I
mentioned in a recent newsletter (Tear-Jerker Series:Part 2 - AILA
sharks):

"Even if this brouhaha is about a real problem, I think
when you look at the number of workers involved, it is
a totally insignificant drop in a massive labour market,"
said Daryl Buffenstein, a immigration lawyer in Atlanta
who has corporate clients and is general counsel for the
American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Cigna has been doing the same thing in Connecticut but they got far
more publicity for their dirty deeds thanks to TORAW. Watch this video
to find out more:
http://www.nbc30.com/nbc30/2190071/detail.html

http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_31927.asp

Cigna Replacing 10 Local Workers With Foreign Hires

posted January 31, 2003

The Cigna insurance firm in Chattanooga has told a group of computer
programmers they are being terminated and the work shifted to foreign
workers.

A group of Cigna employees in a software testing group were told
Thursday that their employment will end in 90 days, during which time,
they were to train their Indian-based replacements.

The workers from India connect to CIGNA's computers via phone lines and
networks in the same way that Chattanooga-based employees do.

Last year, the company announced that it was entering into an
outsourcing arrangement with Satyam, a company based in India. It was
stated that this company had higher-quality, lower-cost workers than
the American-based outsourcing firms with which CIGNA deals, and that
CIGNA would use them to replace American consultants as well as
back-fill staff vacancies.

David Feng, a Cigna spokesman, said, "After a detailed and thorough
analysis, CIGNA Information Management & Technology has made the
decision to transition the work of the Chattanooga-based Test
Environment Unit to Satyam Computer Services.

"This decision will result in the closure of the local unit and the
elimination of approximately 10 IM&T positions. These employee actions
are part of the overall CIGNA HealthCare national restructuring plan
announced earlier this year. Impacted employees were notified on Jan.
30 and most will be eligible for severance benefits and outplacement
services.

"Satyam Computer Services is CIGNAs Offshore Information Technology
Service Provider based in India. This offshore information technology
program a strategy widely adopted by industry competitors such as
Aetna, Wellpoint, Humana, AIG, Metlife and Prudential will provide
greater capacity to move new products to market faster, improve cost
efficiencies and strengthen market competitiveness."

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=3331

US probing L-1 visa misuse

PTI[ TUESDAY, JUNE 03, 2003 01:30:02 PM ]

NEW YORK: American immigration officials are examining whether L-1 visa
under which foreign companies can transfer their employees to their
branches in the United States is being misused, a media report said.

The issue being assessed is whether companies contracting the employees
they bring to US to other companies where they could replace higher
paid American jobs constitutes misuse.

Should they decide that it does, thousands of workers, a major
percentage from India, could be affected.

The assessment by the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services
(BCIS) comes close on the heels of a bill moved in the House of
Representatives that seeks to prevent companies from hiring foreigners
with L-1 visas.

Getting L-1 visa is much easier than H-1B work permit under which the
companies are expected to pay minimum wages to the employees. In the
three years since the technology bubble bust, the New York Times says
the companies are increasingly using L-1 visa to bring the workers to
the United States.

The number of workers under L-1 had gone up to 57,700 last year from
41,739 in 1999, the paper reports.

Even as legal experts debate the legality of contracting workers,
Congressman John L Mica, a Republican, who introduced the bill told the
paper that "When you have people using this to bring in lower-cost
labour to displace Americans, it's something we need to address."

The number of Americans who have been replaced by foreign contract
workers is not known but US companies that use contract workers have
said that the decision to hire them is based on factors like skills,
and not on cost alone.

But a spokesman for BCIS Bill Strassberger was quoted by the Times as
saying if this is a company offering the services of their employee to
go work for another company, it sounds dubious.

"To bring someone in ostensibly as an intracompany transfer and then
put him to work for somebody else and then to say that we're paying him
still, that just sounds like someone's trying to really stretch the
envelope on that visa category," Strassberger said.

During the boom years, the technology industries successfully lobbied
Congress to expand the number of foreign software engineers who could
be permitted to fill programming needs in the United States.

In 2000, Congress increased the annual cap on more restrictive
temporary visas - known as H-1B visas - for highly skilled foreign
workers to 195,000 from 115,000. That quota will drop automatically to
65,000 on October 1 unless Congress approves an extension, a move that,
the Times says, is considered unlikely.

In the last two years, the trend in the use of H-1B visas has declined
sharply. Many experts say the use of L-1 visas will grow. Unlike the
H-1B visa, the L-1 does not require employers to pay workers prevailing
wages. In addition, there is no cap on the number of L-1 visas.

This, the paper says, has ignited an outcry among technology workers
who have lost jobs and say that foreign contract workers are paid
substantially less than prevailing wages in the industry.

The Time says Satyam Computer Services, a consulting firm based in
India, for example, now has a contract with the Cigna Corporation that
has around 100 Satyam employees working on computer applications
management in Cigna offices. Wipro, InfoSys and Tata Consultancy
Services, all of them based in India, are other companies that are
using L-1 visas to get workers into the United States, the Times says.

It quotes Girish Surendran, a human resources manager who oversees
immigration issues at Tata, as saying his company "is committed in
letter and spirit to all the requirements and regulations of all visa
categories."

"If workers are replaced, it's not that TCS. comes in and employees get
let go." Surendran said he could not comment on a company's reason for
laying workers off.

Wipro, the paper says. plans to lobby against Mica's bill. If it
becomes law, said Sridhar Ramasubbu, investor relations manager at
Wipro, the company will simply turn back to H1-B visas.

"We will not be affected financially because our compensation is the
same whether somebody comes in under an H-1 or an L-1," Ramasubbu said.

But trade groups representing American workers say the foreign workers
are paid considerably less.

The paper quoted some experts as saying that the use of L-1 visas for

contract workers is not widespread and that fears of losing jobs to
foreign workers are exaggerated.

"Even if this brouhaha is about a real problem, I think when you look
at the number of workers involved, it is a totally insignificant drop
in a massive labour market," said Daryl Buffenstein, a immigration
lawyer in Atlanta who has corporate clients and is general counsel for
the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

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