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Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Office Sweatshop Workers, or, From Those Who Wish to Remain Anonymous
Posted by Citizen Carrie | 7:37 PM
My Anonymous Tipster sent me a link to a January 29, 2008 blog post, "David Perla - Anti-American Traitor". You may or not recall reading Perla's name before in a prior post I did dated January 15, 2008, where he was one of the main speakers at a Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) summit in New York City. Perla, the co-CEO of the LPO firm of Mumbai-based Pangea3, has a very dim view of the abilities and work ethic of American workers.
In his view, the temporary [American] lawyers typically hired to perform document review on major litigation have minimal skills and zero motivation. In contrast, Pangea3 can attract the best and the brightest young lawyers in India, fluent in English and trained in English common law. Perla said clients have held "bake-offs" in which the Pangea3's Indian lawyers were asked to perform the same tasks as U.S. contract lawyers. He said the Indians soundly trounced the Americans.
The article this quote is taken from, in Law.com, goes on to state:

The only lawyers who work for [American] staffing agencies, said Perla, "are the ones who couldn't make it as real lawyers."
Don't think this type of attitude doesn't affect the salaries and job prospects for all of us good worker bees.

I actually ran across this blog site, Temporary Attorney: The Sweatshop Edition, once before. I neglected to bookmark it, so I lost track of it. It's a horribly depressing, but informative, site chronicling how entering the legal profession is hardly a sure road to instant wealth. Take a look through some of the other blog posts. It's a real eye-opener.

My Anonymous Factchecker sent me this link for a company named NRISoft, which bills itself as being "The Un-Sweatshop". ("NRI", by the way, stands for "Non-Resident Indian".)

I thought it was a joke at first, but it's a real company and a real web site. However, we have a little story within a story. On Monday, when I first read this web page, it said the following under "Who Is eligible to apply for jobs at NRISoft?"
NRISoft is taking applications from professionals holding H1b visa status. We predominantly serve the H1b community. Although we do accept professionals with greencard and American citizenship.
[Note from Carrie. That part about accepting professionals with American citizenship is probably just a little CYA].

By a wild coincidence*, today, the wording has changed to:
NRISoft is an equal opportunity employer. However among professionals residing in America, the ones with H1b visa find our services most useful because of the inequity of pay of a H1b workers vs US citizen/greencard holders. Only jobs that cannot be filled by US Citizen are offered to H1b workers.
[Whew! A little more ass is covered now.]

So why should a potential employee work for NRISoft?

Why is NRISoft so generous?

We at NRISoft, do not consider ourselves generous. We just happen to think that most other consulting companies are just unfair. For example, you spend 4 yrs at an IIT. They pay you $80,000/yr or ($40/hr). They bill you at $100/hr. Are they being fair? They will tell you, that you are not being fair leaving them. At the end of the day, we all need to watch out for the best interest of our family.

War on Sweat Shops and Body Shops! Is NRISoft fighting this war?

No, NRISoft is not fighting the war against exploitation. NRISoft is just a weapon. If you are a first class professional, we hope you will make the right decision to get paid what you really deserve, based on the wages in America (not in India/China/Russia).

A commenter in the "Guestbook" section took issue with NRISoft claiming to be a more generous bodyshop than the others. Unfortunately, that comment was deleted before I could copy it. However, the gist of it was "I'm taunting you because you are a little company that is doomed to fail because you are paying your workers too much. I work for a highly successful company that pays its workers much less, and owner of the company is one of the richest men in the world." (It sounds like he was describing Wipro's owner, Azim Premji.)

The remaining Guestbook entry is just as illuminating, as the worker described how he used to work for a company that paid him $36,000 per year, but billed him out for $160,000 per year!

*That wild coincidence being, Rob Sanchez, the perpetual thorn in the side to H-1B apologists, posted an article about NRISoft at VDare earlier today. I discovered his post just as I was putting the finishing touches on my own post. I opted to publish this as is.

(Cross-posted at Carrie's Nation.)

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