A disgusting video: U.S. companies sell out Americans

If you thought some of the CEOs caught up in the scandals of WorldCom, ENRON, and TYCO were heartless and greedy, watch this video from Cohen & Grigsby. The people on this video make them look like saints. Why? Because the people on the video have no regard for people trying to make a living to support their families.

Think about all the average Joes and Janes out there in the last couple of years that have not been able to find a good job in information technology, finance, and many other disciplines when they had skills, a degree or two and had all the experience and certifications that supposedly are what companies look for.

They were told that they were overqualified. They were told they were not right for the job. They were told they were not experienced in a certain area and many other lame HR excuses that they knew something wasn't right, but they couldn't prove that their concerns were valid. This left many people concerned about their future as well as their financial well-being.

As one person told me after viewing the video, “I saw this video recently... I've wondered about this phenomenon (about not getting a response), and now I know the reason why.”

Is cheaper really better? So many went off and took lesser paying jobs in the last several years because the doors were systematically closed on them by some who thought “cheaper was better.” I highlighted this in several articles going back to 2002, when I wrote this:

“Hire cheap or hire well. What happens at your company, time will tell.” Someone that takes a job that pays cheap is just using it as a temporary desk and phone to arrange for their next position. Someone that is paid well is going to work well.

The people on the video have to rate very high on the “sell your brother out to make a buck” scale.

Conspiracy for discrimination?

This is discrimination on a massive scale. Phony ads in the paper when there really are no jobs - at least not for Americans?

Disqualifying people because they are "overqualified," which is just corporate-speak for “too expensive”. Bring in qualified people and just go through the motions interviewing them so you can justify hiring a non-citizen because you can claim there were no qualified applicants who are citizens. These are just some of the tricks these people have suggested, and companies have implemented, in order to bring in cheaper labor.

Any HR person who followed this doctrine has absolutely no integrity, but they probably did it in order to keep their own job. As a friend of mine once said, “This business has gotten so bad, it has gone from dog-eat-dog to rat-eat-rat.”

Lou Dobbs weighed in on this on YouTube, and it should be played as much as Paris Hilton getting out of jail. Where is the outrage? Where are the unions?

So what has all this wrought?

With some letters from senators going to the Department of Labor, the department says it is going to look into this. Hmmm. The best thing that could happen would be to take all the people in the Department of Labor and let them find new jobs because they have not done anything on this issue.

Maybe the best way they could understand the plight of these Americans would be to be lay off themselves, look for a job, and be told they have no skills by one company, and then be told by another company that they are “overqualified.” Think about the frustration people went through. Some are still going through it.

I knew of several people who sent hundreds of resumes into companies and did not even get one response. I sent the link to this video to them. Maybe just getting their resumes was justification enough for the company to claim they had enough interest from American citizens who they deemed unqualified or “overqualified” so they could hire a cheaper foreign worker.

One person called after watching and said he felt he wasted days trying to send resumes that were just going into the garbage.

“Best Practices” are not found in bureaucracies, and best workers are not always found halfway around the world.

High underemployment rates

Unemployment rates may be 4.5 percent but underemployment rates are very high. No one tracks that so we can only estimate, but it is a real issue as many in the Midwest still suffer from job losses that happened four to five years ago.

The long-term aftermath of this fiasco is a flurry of foreclosures that is still on the increase, more credit card spending, and the general weakening of the economy that economists either fail to recognize or just fail to incorporate into their findings.

CARLINI-ISM: Hiring practices are a sham. There is more talent on the street than there are at many companies.

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