The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“WORKFORCE IMPROVEMENT AND PROTECTION ACT OF 1998” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Commerce was published in the Senate section on pages S12254-S12257 on Oct. 9, 1998.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
WORKFORCE IMPROVEMENT AND PROTECTION ACT OF 1998
Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of H.R. 3736, a bill to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to make changes relating to H-1B nonimmigrants.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. HARKIN. I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I regret that this objection is being made. The bill is vital to the technology industry, and this objection makes it impossible to pass the bill this year.
Mr. HARKIN. Will the Senator yield for about 3 minutes?
Mr. COATS. I am happy to yield to the Senator.
Mr. HARKIN. I appreciate the Senator from Indiana yielding to me to explain why I object to this.
Before I get into that, let me say that I was here for part of his speech. He thanked his staff. I thought it was a very gracious and wonderful thing the Senator did. It was really nice.
I must say, I will miss you here in the Senate, Dan. As I said before, you have been a wonderful person to work with. I hate to end it on this note, where I am objecting to something that you are bringing up. You have been a great Senator. You have been a great human being to work with. We will miss you. I will miss you, personally. All of my friends who have left said there is a life beyond the Senate. Quite frankly, it is probably a lot better, considering we are here at 7:30 on a Friday night.
Mr. President, I just want to explain why I object to this bill. This is the bill that would have increased the number of H-1B visas from 65,000 per year to 115,000 for next year and the year after, then drop down to 107,500 in 2001 and back down to 65,000 thereafter.
Now, ostensibly, the reason for doing this, and why this came up in the last couple of years, is that there was projected to be a big shortage in computer programmers. Thus, there was this big push to increase the number of H-1B visas, to get these computer programmers.
It turns out that has, indeed, not happened. In fact, I have three recent articles. One is from the San Jose Mercury News dated October 6, 1998. It says:
High-tech Layoffs are Accelerating.
They pointed out in the article:
Computers ranked second in total job-cut announcements, with 44,000. That represented nearly three times the number from last year.
The article goes on to say:
The changing job market can be seen at the Career Action Center, a career resource center in Cupertino, where counselors are seeing more people come in. Job searches are taking more time, companies are taking longer to make their hiring decision, and some businesses have even enacted hiring freezes, said Betsy Collard, the center's strategic development director.
While the center posted 10,000 jobs in August, that was down from 13,500 it posted a year earlier.
I ask unanimous consent the article be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
High-Tech Layoffs Are Accelerating
(By Jonathan Rabinovitz)
High-technology industries have cut four times as many jobs nationally in 1998 as they did in the same period last year, imposing more layoffs than almost every other sector of the economy, according to a report released Tuesday by an international outplacement firm.
The survey of job-cut announcements was yet another signal of the slowing of economic growth both in Silicon Valley and nationally. It attributed many of the reductions to the global financial crisis, particularly the recession that has gripped much of Asia.
And while the labor market in the San Jose area remains tight--the 3.4 percent unemployment rate in August was down from last year--one of the authors of the study said that this year's downsizing tend has already dimmed the rampant optimism that once pervaded Silicon Valley.
``People used to say that you don't have anything to worry about, but that's not the case any more,'' said John A. Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., the Chicago-based company that compiles the monthly survey. ``The ice seems a little bit thinner right now.''
Still, Silicon Valley and the state continue to add thousands of jobs, at a pace that outstrips the rate of layoffs, though job growth has slowed both here and nationally.
The layoffs in high-tech companies come against a backdrop of increased job-cut announcements across the country. The September figure for job-cut announcements was the highest reported by the survey since January 1996. The amount has generally increased each month this year.
And the total number of job cuts for all industries was up 53 percent--about 150,000 job-cut announcements--from the amount for the first nine months of 1997.
But perhaps the most striking change was in the high-tech industries. While electronics, computers and telecommunications were not among the top five industries in job-cut announcements last year at this time, all three industries were now in that category.
Electronics, which includes chip manufacturing, had more announcements than any other industry. The number had increased to nearly 70,000, eight times more than the first nine months of last year, according to the Challenger survey.
Computers ranked second in total job-cut announcements, with 44,000. That represented nearly three times the number from last year.
Telecommunications was placed fifth. It increased to nearly 29,000, four times the amount in 1997.
The changing job market can be seen at the Career Action Center, a career resource center in Cupertino, where counselors are seeing more people come in. Job searches are taking more time, companies are taking longer to make their hiring decision and some businesses have even enacted hiring freezes, said Betsy Collard, the center's strategic development director.
While the center posted 10,000 jobs in August, that was down from the 13,500 it posted a year earlier.
But, Collard stressed, ``It is still a very good job market.''
Indeed, the Challenger survey should not inspire panic in Silicon Valley. Its findings reveal only a small and recent dent in an economic miracle that has included phenomenal job growth.
Another report, issued this week by the American Electronics Association, showed how Silicon Valley extended its reach throughout California from 1990 to 1996.
While Santa Clara County added almost 25,000 high-tech jobs during that period to reach a total of 221,000 technology jobs--a 12 percent increase--other California metropolitan areas had substantial employment growth in the tech industries.
The Sacramento area, for instance, had 30,000 high-tech jobs by 1996, a 56 percent jump from six years earlier. San Mateo, San Francisco and Marin Counties had a total of about 49,000 high-tech jobs, up 37 percent over the same period. And Alameda and Contra Costa Counties had 53,000, a 14 percent increase from 1990.
Still, the continued growth had a new facet this year, it was accompanied by a spate of down-sizing efforts that approach the scope of the deepest cuts of the decade in 1993, Challenger said.
Over the last year, many of Silicon Valley's most revered companies have announced layoffs. Santa Clara-based Applied Materials has eliminated almost one out of every four positions. Scotts Valley-based Seagate said in January it would reduce its work force by 10,000 employees worldwide. And San Jose-based Adobe Systems said it would cut anywhere between 240 to 300 jobs.
The Challenger Survey has been conducted since 1993. It is based entirely on public reports of job cuts and calculates all reductions announced by U.S.-based companies.
Mr. HARKIN. Another recent article from Computer World, dated October 5, 1998, talked about the same subject:
The year 2000 retention drama is playing out differently from what was expected. The widely anticipated programmer shortage never quite materialized, but another shortage has proved far more dangerous.
``We'd always heard the industry speak of demand for programmers, but the more critical and unexpected demand is for project managers,'' says Irene Dec, vice president of information systems at the Prudential Insurance Company of America in Newark, NJ.
The article pointed out, quite frankly, that the programmers are in fine shape. What they are really looking for are program managers. I understand the H-1B visa does not in any way address that problem at all.
I ask unanimous consent this article also be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
The Millennium's Superstars
year 2000 project managers are worth their weight in gold. how do you keep them?
(By Kathleen Melymuka)
The year 2000 retention drama is playing out differently from what was expected. The widely anticipated programmer shortage never quite materialized, but another shortage has proved far more dangerous.
``We'd always heard the industry speak of demand for programmers, but the more critical and unexpected demand is for project managers,'' says Irene Dec, vice president of information systems at The Prudential Insurance Company of America in Newark, N.J.
``Those are the people that make the different between success and failure,'' says Chas Snyder, who heads the year 2000 project at Levi Strauss & Co. in San Francisco. ``If somebody is experienced at running an effort like this for a large company, the knowledge they develop is invaluable.''
Keeping programmers ``has not been as big a problem as people thought it was going to be,'' says Jim Jones, managing director of the year 2000 group at the Information Management Forum in Atlanta. ``It's not the worker-bee folks they're hurting for; it's project managers.''
An August survey of 100 contracting and consulting firms by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) showed that the ``overwhelming majority'' have more programmers than they can use. The ITAA called the anticipated programmer shortage ``a marketplace failing to live up to its prior billing.''
The supply of year 2000 programmers has been bigger than expected because many corporations outsourced coding to offshore companies, vendors developed year 2000 tools that automated much of the coding process, and schools and training facilities graduated a bumper crop of programmers geared to the job.
With programmers available, companies realized where the real crunch would be. ``Even the best programmers in the world can't make it happen if no one is managing,'' Dec says.
Depending on the organization, year 2000 project managers may be found at every level--and every salary--from corporate vice presidents through division managers, business functional team leaders and department honchos. There may be one project manager, or there may be a pyramid of project managers--from each division or business unit, for example--reporting to a chief. But wherever they are found, they are hard to keep. ``We know that our people are being called [by headhunters] because they tell us,'' says Gael Hanover, senior director of human resources for information systems at Sears. Roebuck and Co. in Hoffman Estates, Ill. ``Consulting firms can dangle pretty big salaries, and we can't.''
In fact, some consulting firms are so desperate for project managers that they are willing to pay them at the rate they bill customers for their services. ``The projects can't get done without project managers, so if they bill [companies] at
$125 an hour, they're willing to give [project managers] $125 an hour,'' Jones says. ``No corporation can do that.''
But corporations have come up with other strategies to keep their year 2000 project managers on the job through the millennium. Some strategies rely on the lure of money and perks, but most are based on the understanding that retention has to be a long-term effort because the need for project managers won't go away after 2000.
RECOGNITION AND ROTATION
At Kraft Foods, Inc. in Northfield, Ill., where the overall IS turnover rate is 5%, Chief Information Officer Jim Kinney has been very careful to make year 2000 a high-profile, high-recognition temporary job. ``We've chosen very good people for project teams,'' he says. Most work only on the application set for which they're normally responsible.
``Once that's finished, they rotate back to their regular assignment,'' Kinney explains.
Smart companies are making sure their year 2000 project managers don't stagnate during the project. ``Folks focused on year 2000 are being sent to appropriate training and conferences and classes so they can stay up with technology,'' Dec says. She has lost only five of the 60 to 80 people in her year 2000 program management team.
Keane, Inc. in Boston, a provider of year 2000 services, has established an internal organization to look after the career development of its project managers, says David Pollard, Keane's director of recruiting.
``Rather than simply throw cash at the issue, we tapped into meeting their development objectives and getting [them] the right training so they can be successful in the long haul,'' he says. Turnover has declined 30% since the development organization was founded last year.
MONEY
There's nothing wrong with money judiciously deployed, and bonuses of 20% of salary aren't uncommon. Sears is offering year 2000 project managers and selected other periodic cash bonuses through April 2000.
``If we lost one of these folks, we would be hurting more than if we lost 10 other people. So rather than spread [the money] to everyone, we do more for some,'' Hanauer says.
BE PREPARED
Nothing can guarantee that you will retain the people crucial to your year 2000 effort. Knowing that, Snyder planned for the worst. ``My biggest fear was to lose people in high leverage points,'' he says. ``So for my core four or five managers, I designed responsibilities to be shared. That way, if I lost one, we could cover the responsibility easily.''
He did lose one, he says, ``but we were able to pick up the slack running.''
the BIG PICTURE
Unlike year 2000 programmers, who know their peak earning time is limited, project managers have the luxury of a long view. If your company's view is the same, you have an advantage. ``Year 2000 is a short-term brass ring,'' Snyder says. ``There might be enough in a year or two to make it worthwhile for some people to leave, but if you're thinking long term, it's not enough. The people I have are long-term Levi's employees, and they plan on staying here.''
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I think this bill, at the time it came up, was probably well intentioned.
Another article I want to have printed in the Record is an article from Labor Relations Week, dated September 30, 1998:
The latest data from the Challenger report showed that so far this year, electronics industry job reductions announcements have totaled 60,845, and those in the computer industry totaled 40,642.
I ask unanimous consent this article be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Layoff Reports Outpacing Level Seen Last Year; High-Tech Hit Hard
With high-technology industries particularly hard hit, the pace at which U.S. corporations are announcing workforce reductions remained brisk through August, according to the latest figures from the international outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
In August, U.S. companies announced that they plan to make job cuts totaling 37,717, the Challenger report, released Sept. 8, said. That figure, while it was smaller than reported in July, put the total for the first eight months of this year at 358,394--which is 37 percent higher than the total for the comparable period of 1997.
In fact, the January-to-August total for this year is only 11 percent lower than the total reported by Challenger for the same period in 1993, the year that the firm began its layoff survey.
``There have been a significant number of downsizing announcements in 1998, reflecting a number of factors that include the global situation, especially in Asia.'' John Challenger, executive vice president of the firm, told BNA. He said that given the increased pressure on some U.S. industries due to the Asian economic crisis, there are likely to be more layoff announcements in the industries most affected.
The latest data from the Challenger report showed that so far this year, electronics industry job reductions announcements have totaled 60,845, and those in the computer industry totaled 40,642.
``We've seen the 10 largest mergers in [U.S.] history all announced since last fall,'' Challenger said, citing another indication of labor market flux. In many cases, companies are reducing their workforces in one area at the same time that they are adding employees in other areas, he said.
While Challenger said that he does not expect 1998 to surpass 1993 in total layoff announcements, he said that the fact that the total for the first eight months of this year is so close to 1993 total indicates that ``companies are quicker to respond to changes in the marketplace.''
Layoff announcements tracked by the Challenger firm are based on publicly released estimates of planned workforce reductions that could take place immediately or over an extended period of time, the firm said. Announcements of job reduction plans are verified by the Challenger firm, and the tallies are revised only if companies announce that they have changed their plans, the firm said.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I object because I think while this maybe had some legitimacy at some time because of the projected shortage in computer programmers, every indication is that has not happened.
Obviously, we don't need to pass this bill right now. I think we can take another look at it next year to see if, in fact, there is any problem. We can always come back and look at this again next year, but right now it does not appear that the demand is there that they anticipated a couple of years ago.
Mr. COATS. Mr. President, first of all, I thank the Senator from Iowa for his kind comments. We have served together in the Labor Committee for a 10-year period of time. While we have had our disagreements, we have also agreed on a number of things. I have enjoyed working with him.
I understand, but regret, the objection of this unanimous consent request. There obviously is a difference of opinion as to the need for support in the technology industry, the computer industry, particularly with the Y2K problem. That issue will have to be resolved. There is honest disagreement here. We will pick the issue up in the next Congress.
Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I would like to turn my attention briefly to the issue which was discussed by the Senator from Iowa in raising objection to proceeding with the legislation aimed at trying to expand the number of H-1B entries as permitted on an annual basis to be employed by American businesses.
The Senator focused on a very narrow issue in raising his objection--
specifically, the argument based on several newspaper stories that there is not a shortage of skilled workers in the high-tech industries.
Virtually every study that I have seen--and as the principal sponsor of the legislation when it was in the Senate, I made most of those available as part of the Record--indicates that, indeed, we have a very severe shortage in these high-tech worker job slots. Virginia Tech University conducted a recent study which indicated over 340,000 vacancies in information technology positions that exist today in this country. Our Department of Commerce conducted a study which revealed it is anticipated that in each of the next 10 years we will generate over 130,000 new information technology jobs and yet the combined resources of our colleges, universities, and job training programs and high schools is only likely to fill a fraction of those every year. This is a severe problem, and it is especially severe at this time.
The Senator from Iowa talks about moving us to next year. Well, next year just happens to be the last few months prior to the year 2000. By the time this legislation might be brought back before us, we will be in a situation where the Federal Government as well as the companies from one end of America to the other are going to be confronted with the final crisis stages of trying to prepare our high-tech systems for the Year 2K problems that we have all been raving so much about.
If we do not pass this legislation, it is going to be Senators such as the Senator who raised this objection and others who have impeded the progress in this legislation who are going to have to explain to all of those whose systems break down why it is that happened, because one of the problems we are having confronting the Year 2K problems is an inadequate number of people to perform all of the various information technology jobs required to be conducted for those problems to be fixed. That is just one aspect of it. It is late in the evening so I am not going to go into all of the many others, but I think that any study that has been conducted by serious researchers reveals that there not only exists, but will continue to be, an ever larger number of vacancies in this area.
This legislation that was stopped tonight not only covers increasing the number of high-tech workers, it also is a very important piece of legislation to our academic institutions--in two respects. First, regarding many of the high-tech jobs, many of the H-1B visa users are in fact employed on our campuses teaching American kids how to perform these high-technology jobs so we can meet the demand in this area in the future. If we do not have these scientists, these educators, we are going to continue to fail to meet the challenge.
In addition, our academic institutions were relying on the passage of this legislation to address a very serious problem created by the Hathaway decision with regard to the prevailing wage they must pay people who come in under the H-1B Program. So this does not just affect the private sector, it affects our academic institutions as well.
In addition, the Senator from Iowa and others who question the problem do not need to just listen to people on our side of the aisle. They can listen to the President of the United States who, I believe just 2 weeks ago this evening, was in Silicon Valley in California before a group of executives from the high-tech industries there talking about this issue. The day after his staff and my staff and I reached agreement on the legislation that has been blocked this evening, he took credit for the ability, that we were then apparently going to have, to move forward to it and acknowledged the need for the legislation in taking credit for the settlement and agreement we had reached.
Obviously, whether it is the White House, the Department of Commerce, Virginia Tech University, or any one of a number of other sources, there is an acknowledged existence of a problem here that has to be addressed. I am extremely disappointed at what has transpired this evening.
I would just say, in conclusion, we have not, obviously, reached the end of this session. There is still some time, hopefully, for reconsideration by the Senator from Iowa and any others who may have concerns. I hope they will rethink this. I hope they will realize, in undermining this legislation, in stopping it at this time, they are going to be hurting not just the business sector and the information technology sector, but the academic sector. They are also going to prevent us from instituting a whole new array of job training programs and scholarship programs that were going to be launched by this legislation. So I hope they will take a look at that, reconsider, and if they look at the numbers a little more closely, I think they will reach the same conclusions we have.
Mr. President, I close by saying I hope the Senator from Iowa, and others who might share his position, again will look closely at the statistics I have talked about tonight, examine all the other aspects of this legislation and what it will mean if it does not move forward in all the different contexts I have outlined and the many others I have not had time for, rethink whether or not it is appropriate to put this off to some future date, and think about the consequences, whether it is in the context of the Y2K problems or the current economic conditions we have in the world marketplace where America's high-tech industries' growth is essential to the maintenance of our economic strength, and reconsider their position.
I yield the floor.
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