Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan was grilled during a congressional hearing this week for the multinational corporation’s outsourcing scheme that has left thousands of Americans out of work.
Last year, Wells Fargo executives announced that about 26,500 employees at the company would be laid off after years of the corporation’s outsourcing and offshoring of American jobs to India and the Philippines. In 2017, about 650 American workers were laid off by Wells Fargo in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Washington.
At the same time, Americans were being laid off, the multinational bank announced it would hire an additional 7,000 workers in the Philippines to add to its 4,000-strong workforce in the country.
In 2018, Wells Fargo executives said nearly 640 American workers would soon be let go and would not certify that those jobs would not be sent to India or the Philippines, as has been the case in the past.
Rep. Cindy Axne (D-IA) questioned Sloan over the corporation’s outsourcing of American jobs. In one case, Axne explained, a Wells Fargo worker in Des Moines, Iowa was allegedly told by executives that her job was being moved to India.
Axne also detailed cases where Wells Fargo employees in Des Moines were allegedly sent to India to train their foreign replacements and have trained their replacements through “virtual classrooms” before they were laid off.
The exchange went as follows:
AXNE: In September 2018 Wells Fargo announced it planned to reduce its work force by laying off as many as 26,000 workers. In November 2018, Wells announced it was laying off 1,000 employees – 400 of those were in Des Moines, correct?
SLOAN: We never announced that we were going to layoff up to 26,000 employees. what I said at a town hall where I —
AXNE: Did you layoff 400 employees in Des Moines?
SLOAN: I was referring to the first part of your question. That’s not an accurate statement. Generally what I said was that between — that over the next three years, we expect our total employment to reduce by between five and 10% —
AXNE: I’m concerned about the people in my District. Were 400 of those people in Des Moines?
SLOAN: 400 folks were displaced in Des Moines.
AXNE: What was the reason for that layoff in Des Moines?
SLOAN: It depended upon their job. Some of those folks were displaced because of the fact that the amount of servicing demand that we had in the mortgage servicing business had declined. There were other reasons —
AXNE: I have a signed affidavit here saying that an employee in Des Moines was told her job was being moved to India and employees in that area have gone to India to train those replacements and I’ve heard from employees that are using your virtual classrooms for that same purpose to train other people in other companies. Are these recent layoffs really just you moving jobs overseas?
SLOAN: No. That’s incorrect.
AXNE: You’ve added more than 10,000 employees between India and the Philippines in the last five years and I know you’re building a new facility in Philippines for another 7,000 employees I believe. Can we expect that more of your planned layoffs are going to be jobs moved overseas?
SLOAN: No. I don’t believe that’s going to be the case. We have 20,000 job opening at Wells Fargo today. 90% of those are here in the US, probably more than that. We hire between 40 and 50,000 —
AXNE: I fail to understand, though, how we’re laying people off in this country and building jobs overseas. thank you.
In Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District in 2018, there were more than 2,000 H-1B foreign visa workers employed at a variety of companies earning mostly between $60,000 to $80,000 a year — U.S. jobs that would have otherwise gone to American middle class professionals. Wells Fargo, as of 2018, employed 36 H-1B foreign visa workers in Iowa’s 3rd District.
Every year, more than 100,000 foreign workers are brought to the U.S. on the H-1B visa and allowed to stay for up to six years. There are about 650,000 H-1B visa foreign workers in the U.S. at any given moment. Americans are often laid off in the process and forced to train their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News. More than 85,000 Americans a year potentially lose their jobs to foreign labor through the H-1B visa program.
Wells Fargo has consistently imported foreign workers through the H-1B visa program to take high-paying, white-collar U.S. jobs. Between 2015 and 2017, Wells Fargo tried to import nearly 400 foreign workers to take jobs in the U.S.
Cheap, foreign labor is the most prominent driver of multinational corporations outsourcing American workers’ jobs to third-world nations.
For instance, while the average yearly American family’s income is roughly $73,000, the average family’s income in the Phillippines is about $5,200 U.S. dollars, making it a haven for multinational corporations to exploit cheap labor, lay off Americans, and widen executives’ profit margins.
Outsourcing and the offshoring of American jobs to foreign countries is a business model that has been embraced by multinational corporations. Corporations like AT&T, Harley-Davidson, Ralph Lauren, Nike, and IBM have all laid off Americans in order to send their jobs overseas.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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