Cinram manufactures and distributes DVDs at their plant in a Huntsville industrial park. The shifts are long (12 hours) and the pay is low ($ 8/hr.) The company says they are unable to find willing workers locally and are importing about 1350 workers from Jamaica, Bolivia, Nepal, Ukraine and the Dominican Republic under H-2B visas.
Cinram certainly may have trouble hiring locally. A friend of mine interviewed for a job there a little over a year ago. The long hours, physically demanding work and low pay led my friend to turn down a job offer -- instead choosing a job in retail with better hours (2 to 10 pm, as I recall) and benefits and similar pay. However, there are people in the region more desparate for a job (not mention more physically capable) than my friend. From the Huntsville Times (emphasis mine):
"Companies are going overseas while we've got people here," said Rev. Dante Moss, who runs a county program that helps ex-convicts find jobs.
Moss said he has 193 candidates looking for work, and that he has found employers in construction and other fields. But he said Cinram and five other area manufacturers declined an invitation to talk about potential workers.
"They're not taking anybody from our program," Moss said. "If this is going to go on, and they won't even try to take an employee or two that can prove themselves, then I'm protesting."
...
Moss said the companies benefit from tax breaks while local residents see little benefit in return.
According to Madison County Tax Assessor's Office, Cinram, which employs about 2,500 people, leases its 161-acre campus on Moores Mill Road from the city's Industrial Development Board.
Although it does not own the land, Cinram pays property taxes on personal property and equipment. For that, Cinram is partially exempt. The company will pay more than $500,000 in taxes in 2007, mostly toward schools. But the company is exempted from about $330,000 worth of other taxes this year.
Huntsville City Councilman Glenn Watson and Madison County Commissioner Mo Brooks are critical of Cinram's importation of cheap labor, as is Madison County Commissioner Bob Harrison.
Still, Madison County Commissioner Bob Harrison said he's sure Cinram could find workers here, because many people come to his office in north Huntsville looking for work. He said companies have an obligation to shareholders, but also to provide jobs to the community.
"I would hope there is not an intent on their part to ignore that responsibility," Harrison said. "If this is a widespread company practice, it has a lot of potential problems."
Cinram employees will be housed in the old (very old) Sheraton building on University Drive:
Two women this week have been cleaning out the 60 rooms, installing about 150 beds. Each room will also have a TV, said one of the women. She said the workers are due to arrive Nov. 23.
Meanwhile, foreign workers are already living in apartments off Drake Avenue and being bused to Cinram for 12-hour shifts.
I'm looking forward to hearing whether these foreign employees are charged for transportation from their home country, housing, meals and/or bus fare to and from the Cinram plant. If they are, there is potential for the "I owe my soul to the company store" situation to develop. H-2B visa workers can only work for the company specified on their visa, so they can't seek better pay or conditions while here.
I'm pretty sure that the city and county governments fixed Cinram up with that tax break because they wanted more jobs in the area. Technically, there are more jobs, but they're not going to people who live here and participate in the community.
It is perfectly legal to bring employees to this country under H-2B visas, but the company has to advertise for local employees first. If no local applicants are qualified, interested, willing and available they can apply for foreign workers under H-2B. Here is video (hat tip to BobOak) of a seminar conducted by Cohen & Grigsby Law Firm on how to make sure no U. S. workers meet those hiring criteria.
The goal?
Our goal is clearly NOT to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker ... in a sense that sounds funny, but it's what we're trying to do here. We are complying with the law fully, but our objective is to get this person a green card ... so certainly we are not going to try to find the place where the applicants are going to be the most numerous. We're going to try to find a place where, again, we're complying with the law and hoping, and likely, not to find a qualified and interested worker applicants.
What about interested and qualified?
If they don't like the salary, if they don't like the work location, they're not interested. Or if they just don't like the job itself, they're not interested. Those are ways we can disqualify them and get them out of the market and focus on the ones who might be more qualified. If it gets to the point where somebody looks like they are very qualified ... if necessary schedule an interview, go through the whole process to find a legal basis to disqualify them for this particular position.
It's nice to see the Huntsville Times digging into local stories like this one -- and I hope they aren't through digging yet.
Highway 431 is also blogging about the Cinram hiring.
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