Resident Fighting to Save American Jobs
By Robin Vinci | Editor at March 31, 2024 | 6:30 pm | Print
New Britain resident Craig Diangelo is speaking out on how American workers are losing their jobs to overseas workers who are paid less through working visas.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, with Diangelo by his side, recently called for an investigation into what Eversource of Berlin, CT did to 220 employees in 2014.
Diangelo was an IT worker at Eversource for over 11 years when the company decided one day to outsource workers to two companies - Infosys and Tata.
“It came as a shock that all of IT was going to be outsourced. One reason given for this was that Global Workers can adjust to technical changes a lot faster than the American IT worker,” said Diangelo. “What we weren’t told was that we would have to train our replacements in order to receive our severance packages. That was a very difficult and humiliating situation to be put in.”
This began in October of 2013 and was supposed to last until the end of December, but instead lasted until May of 2014.
“The reason for this abrupt change was that the workers brought over to take our jobs were not qualified with our job skills,” said Diangelo. “H1-B’s are supposed to be for those who can do a highly skilled job when there is a shortness of workers for these highly skilled jobs.”
Diangelo had his trainings taped and workers shadow him.
“Those were the longest and hardest 5 months of my life. Not only did I lose my work family, but I lost my job and career that I enjoyed doing,” said Diangelo. “We had constant emails reminding us that we could not talk about this situation to anyone or make posts to social media. If we did, we would be fired and would not qualify for severance.”
The only way employees could make a statement was by placing small American flag outside their cubicles and aisles, according to Diangelo. Gradually, as they got replaced by the H1-B’s the flags disappeared.
After Diangelo was let go, any time he spoke about the company he had to do it anonymously. He searched for a new job and was not hired by many because he was over 60 years old.
“No one wants older works. I applied for so many jobs,” he said. “Once a background check happened and they saw my age, I knew I was not getting that job.”
During that time he had to take early retirement to get insurance and lost thousands of dollars. Eventually he found a contract job and it did lead to a full-time work.
Diangelo decided this month to finally stop hiding and then his lawyer Sarah Blackwell reached out to Blumenthal. On March 22, Blumenthal held a press conference asking Eversource for a response on why it was feasible to eliminate these jobs.
According to the New London Day, Blumenthal said during the news conference, “This program, although well intentioned, is rampantly abused. This situation cries out for reform.”
“This is an issue Senator Blumenthal has raised many times before,” said Al Lara of Eversource Media Relations. “Despite his assertions, Eversource has not abused or violated any laws regarding the H1-B visa program. These were state reviewed organizational changes made two and a half years ago to streamline the operations of our newly merged company and better serve our customers.”
During an inquiry into Eversource by the City Journal, a copy of their response to Blumenthal was released. It states only 3 of their 8,000 employees work under a Visa and that “no gag order” exists.
The letter also states that the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority has extensively reviewed the restructuring of their IT platform. The Authority found the plan to be appropriate.
“Eversource takes very serious its responsibilities to comply with the letter and spirit of the law, including the immigration laws of the United States. Eversource never violated or abused the foreign worker non-immigrant visa program or the implementation of laws of the United States. Eversource’s implementation in 2014 of a new IT service model was driven to provide a more efficient IT platform that unfortunately had impacts on a number of IT employees.” according to the letter.
Despite Eversource stating there is “no gag order”, Diangelo said he still feels threatened that he could lose his severance pay by speaking out, but he will not stop.
“I want to help change the law. It was not put into effect to take people’s job away from us,” said Diangelo. “They said they saved $18 million. The saddest part for me is knowing that my job is still there, but not for me.”
Other companies such as Disney have recently let employees go and many say they have hired H1-B workers in their place.
“How can you give our jobs to foreign workers? It’s too late for me, but I don’t want this to happen to anyone else,” said Diangelo. “The American public needs to get educated on H1-B’s and the politicians need to change the law. They destroyed lives of people for no reason.”
Blumenthal, has asked the U.S. attorney general’s office to investigate potential violations by Eversource. Blumenthal is also looking at a bipartisan piece of legislation called the H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act of 2015 to change the law.
