Medtech giant Abbott uses H-1B program to displace U.S. workers

Abbott Laboratories (Abbott Park, IL) is a greatly admired global healthcare company with a 125-year history of innovation and deeply rooted commitment to improving access to healthcare through its philanthropic Abbott Fund. Its Chairman and CEO Miles D. White was named one of the world’s best CEOs by Barron’s in 2016, the eighth consecutive year in which he has made that list. So I have to wonder why the company thought that laying off approximately 180 IT employees and replacing some of them with workers from India hired on H-1B and other temporary visas was a good idea. The company also required some of the displaced workers to train their replacements and to keep any complaints to themselves if they want to receive their full severance payments. This is what Disney did in Orlando not too long ago, which earned it a much-deserved public shaming.

“[H-1B] visas are supposed to be used only to hire college-educated foreigners in ‘specialty occupations’ requiring ‘highly specialized knowledge,’ and only when such hiring will not depress prevailing wages. But in many cases, laid-off American workers have been required to train their lower-paid replacements,” wrote the New York Times in an editorial published on June 16 (“Visa Abuses Harm American Workers”). By making severance payments contingent on signed agreements prohibiting the former employees from bad-mouthing the company, the public response has been muted, but those days may be numbered. In that same op-ed piece, the New York Times writes that “14 former tech workers at Abbott, including one who forfeited a chunk of severance pay rather than sign a so-called nondisparagement agreement, have filed federal claims with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission saying they were discriminated against because of their ages and American citizenship.” Many of the workers who received pink slips reportedly were over the age of 40.

It’s abundantly clear that the H-1B visa program is being abused by corporations. While the practice may not be technically illegal—the law is rife with loopholes—the ethics are deplorable. It can only fuel the increasingly shared sentiment of a rigged system that shores up corporate profits at the expense of U.S. workers. None of this surprises me, except for the fact that a company with Abbott’s history of corporate social responsibility would choose to go down this road.