2w ago

Tesla replaced laid off US workers with foreign workers using H-1B visas that Musk want to increase

electrek.co Tesla replaced laid off US workers with foreign workers using H-1B visas that Musk want to increase

Tesla has replaced some of its US employees who were let go as part of a big wave of layoffs...

Summary

Tesla replaced many laid-off U.S. workers with foreign H-1B visa holders after a 2024 wave of layoffs affecting 15,000 employees.

These visas, tied to employer sponsorship, often lower compensation and give employers significant leverage over workers.

Critics argue this displaces U.S. employees, as senior engineers were replaced by lower-paid junior engineers.

CEO Elon Musk, while advocating for expanding H-1B visa caps, faces backlash, especially from conservatives, for “job-stealing” concerns.

Musk contends there’s a U.S. skill shortage, but critics highlight potential exploitation tied to Tesla’s demanding work culture and visa dependence.

106 comments

~~Musk contends there’s a U.S. skill shortage~~
Billionaire twat contends that he doesn't want to pay for competent employees and prefers slave labor.
Fixed that for him.
- No such thing as a skill shortage. Pay, and they will come or the ones you have here will learn.
  
  Not the case for highly skilled roles that are likely the ones affected here.
  Each H1B application must include a DOL certification stating that the foreign worker will be paid a DOL specified minimum salary for the role, often exceeding 100k.
  In fact since no such certification is necessary for domestic workers, in theory, they could have been paid less than foreign workers.
  This has more to do with laying off experienced employees in senior roles and higher salary brackets and replacing them with “junior” roles at lower salaries, with the same work expectation.
  Layoffs are also a way to take back unvested stock from senior long-serving employees and granting new employees a fraction of that released stock. Just making it a requirement to automatically vest all stocks during layoffs will massively reduce the layoffs.
- So... Tiktok trend? Light a tesla on fire? Make owning his crap such a liability no one ever buys any of it.

These are the types of articles that really hurt trump. The ones that don't even mention him.
For too many people if you take them to that final step of logic to where it's the fault of something they like, they have an emotional reaction.
So as tempting as it is and as obvious as it seems, you gotta let people get to that last step on their own so they think it was their idea. If they think someone told them, they'll disagree out of spite.
- These are the types of articles that really hurt trump. The ones that don’t even mention him.
  Why would an article on President Musk need to mention his vice president?
  
  We are laughing but that probably was their agreement.
  trump wants to not be in prison and wants money. The president title provides first, musk provides the 2nd. musk wants power.
- I skipped a week on politics and I am confused. Something like this feels like it would be the opposite of what Trump wants. Aren’t they bffs?
  
  You missed the Republican civil war over H1B workers. The Alt Right and Maga want to get rid of it in their anti immigration push. The Tech Oligarchs depend on it. Trump sided with the Tech Oligarchs, possibly derailing his first year in office before he's even started.
  
  It's the opposite of MAGA and what they want, but trump sided with the billionaires and now MAGA is pissed at them both

Isn’t this supposed to be illegal? Used to be before you could hire someone on such a visa you had to prove that there was no US employee/candidate who can do that job role. Did that change? Or we’re just letting this guy openly break the law on a massive scale?
- Rich people are above the law. It just doesn’t count. They make laws that have loopholes and hundreds of lawyers to make sure nothing comes of it.
  Are you sick? Me too. Will we ever do something? Probably not.
- Employing undocumented immigrants is supposed to be illegal too but there they were at Mar-a-largo.
- List jobs for pay so low no one will take it, or make standards impossible to meet, i.e. you need 5 years experience of this program that has only existed for 3. See no one in US qualifies gotta go overseas
- That is definitely a rule that
  a job must be advertised and,
  DOL certification attached to every H1B application stating that
  the foreign worker is needed to be hired due to unavailability of domestic workers
  the minimum salary at which that job will be filled.
  
  Additionally, when filing PERM, employers are required to prioritize domestic workers for 6 months after layoffs for the same role. Reference
  But this guy is notorious for finding loopholes and sucking off any dick/teet to skirt the law so here we are.
  This is not unique to Tesla either. With the job market tightening over the last 2-3 years, tech companies have been laying off experienced, higher paid workers (especially who were hired at highly competitive salaries during early pandemic) to replace them with new lower paid ones for the same role.
  The article misrepresents this as a domestic vs foreign workers issue instead of calling out the employer for lying about role responsibilities and exploiting junior employees for doing the same work as was expected from senior employees in the past.
- Employers list the job at such low pay that nobody in the US applies.
- The system was built to be abused, and it's serving its purpose. It's been like this for decades.
- So what? He has presidential immunity.
- I love how they want to make America great again by yet again undercutting us. Then on top of that using foreign labor as a means to strong arm those (and really any) employees even more.
  What. 👏 An. 👏 Ass. 👏 Hole. 👏 Fuck you Musk.
- We put out a job listing, had thousands of applicants, didn't hire any of them, and then concluded no one in America wanted the position!

There is no skill shortage, the skill shortage is absolute bullshit. There is nothing you can learn in a College Classroom that they can't teach you in the field 9 out of 10 times
It is what it has always been. A desire to fill six figure positions with people willing to do them for the minimum wage. (Protip: The exchange rate exists)
- Not even just that, H1-Bs are about two steps shy of importing slave labor. Once you're here in the US, you have to stay continually employed. If you don't become a citizen or gain another type of visa, you get deported if you're not working for a sponsoring company for more than 30 days. Companies continually use this to ensure compliance from workers who might otherwise complain about things like working conditions or pay or long hours.
  
  The American Elite considers the poor lazy because we do not work for free.
- I can't really speak for other areas, but at least in Science and Engineering what a College does that you don't get "in the field" (because it doesn't directly lead to operational results so you don't get the time to learn it) is the foundations for the work you do, so the Mathematics and the "why" certain things work as they work rather than merely the "how" to do it (or at least it did back when I got my degree 3 decades ago).
  Mind you, in my experience your "9 out 10 times" point is probably right at least in what I do - Software Development - that kind of knowledge is only useful in a fraction of the work for a fraction of the people, generally the kind of developer who is a "tool maker" rather than just a "tool user" working in things which are stretching the envelope of what can be done and are innovative or unusual technically (so, not "innovative" business models, which are what most of Tech Startups do nowadays), which might actually be an even worse ratio than 1 in 10 for those people vs the general universe in even just Software Development (much less Tech in general).
  I supposed that what I'm trying to say is that at least in Tech you're not going to be all that great at doing work which extends the boundaries of what is possible without the kind of foundations a good Science or Engineering degree will give you - hence there is value in such education - but the vast majority of people in even the supposedly expert positions in Tech aren't extending the boundaries of what is possible, not even close.
  (In other words, I'm expanding on what you said rather than disagreeing with it)
  
  Indeed, maybe I should try to see if I can get a better job than janitor.
  Maybe it would help this country a lot if businesses were encouraged to not require college degrees for as many positions. I mean the fact that they're trying to hire people from third world countries who aren't exactly "Harvard Material" for these gigs, I mean I'm not calling them dumb, heavens no. But in those kinds of places I wouldn't be surprised to find out they're still using Windows Vista if you know what I mean, basic computer literacy isn't as common in these regions as it is here... So that kinda gives up the game right there doesn't it?

H1B is just corporations trying to drive down tech wages. Things is, the "skilled workers" they get from other countries are often unskilled who just learn as best they can on the job. I deal with one of the big companies that supplies these workers and the vast majority of their personnel are "bodies." You may have 1-2 fairly skilled people leading the team while the rest are folks who can follow a script if it's written well enough... Zero critical thinking or depth of knowledge.
While the short term may seem beneficial on paper, you get what you pay for. You can't fake your way without longer term problems showing up.
It's also another form of job exporting like the manufacturing jobs that corporations got rid of, and we know what that did to the US.
I'm good with a massive reduction on H1B.
- They want workers who can't jumo to another company. If an H1B worker quits, they get deported.
  It's about indentured servitude.
- I deal with one of the big companies that supplies these workers and the vast majority of their personnel are “bodies.”
  InfoSys. My issue with these folks is that generally speaking they go into programming because it's a lucrative career, not because they have even a mild interest in it as an activity. I've encountered a few exceptions to this in my career, but they're extremely rare.
  
  InfoSys. My issue with these folks is that generally speaking they go into programming because it’s a lucrative career, not because they have even a mild interest in it as an activity.
  My experience with H-1Bs has been very much like that. Although during the dot-com bubble and again more recently, I've experienced more than a few citizens in the same camp, too. The same type of person that learned to spell HTML in a bid to make it rich during the dot-com bubble is now the same type that you see trying to LARP as a "front-end developer" in React or what have you. That's if they aren't trying to flex on people by talking about something like Rust or have debates about htmx, SPAs, or whatever the fuck, but not really producing working, well-tested code that meets the business need or what have you, even if it's not in the language/framework of the Youtube channel they happen to be following...
  I've noticed during a downturn/layoff session, they might not get rooted out right away, as some of the citizen programmers have priced themselves wayyyy under market probably because they know they are posing. But I think ultimately many of them do migrate to management, testing, documentation, or something else on the periphery of the actual work of programming. That, or leave the field entirely.
- Yeah, I've seen incredibly wide ranges of talent both in seeking out dirt-cheap labor in places like India or Pakistan via offshoring engagements - most of that range being on the very, very low-quality range. I was not convinced it was even the same people working on it from week to week. For one of the projects, the "design", such as it was, was so bad that it was something that required a rewrite by skilled citizens. So they saved no money at all on that one.
  A few - very few - of the people I've worked with that were H-1B were good enough, and like one or two that were pretty good. Nothing that needed to be sourced outside of the pool of citizens, though. Most of them struck me as people kind of still halfway through an undergrad program or maybe a boot camp in skill level and general knowledge of IT.
  I'd welcome killing H-1B completely and taxing services for offshoring to a high enough extent to discourage it. People were told to get educated, get a degree, go to boot camp, and have a job with semblance of dignity. And the broligarchs and government work hand-in-glove to fuck over Americans that did the right thing while fucking over foreigners? To hell with that.
  On the other hand, I think we should be pushing for more enterprising and smart people to come here, permanently. It's good for those that want to come here, and it's good for America, too, since they are likely to make things better here, both by contributing to the taxes. I think foreigners tend to start more businesses than natives, too. I think it's exceedingly stupid and short-sighted to bring people here, exploit them, but also give them lots of on the job experience, then send them home afterwards? How is that the American dream?
  I still think the brain drain donvict 1.0 started by scaring off foreign students is going to hurt us long term. We might not have felt the effects just yet, and now he's going to have another chance to make it even worse. But abusing H-1Bs and screwing citizens is not going to address the brain drain problem.
  
  Wouldn't you fix this with some basic safeguards for those in h1-b programs though? Like require six months of seperation or something. Ive worked 18 years in the industry and met a lot of great engineers on that program but I always found it to be very exploitative. I've also meet a lot of US born engineers that are complete idiots just chasing the money so I don't find it to be a where you were born kind of thing.

I have been involved in 2 layoffs. The work did not disappear. The first time, I trained the imported / overseas staff who replaced us, and the 2nd time, I was retained to manage the contract. They did subpar work for pennies on the dollar. Everyone suffered, and nothing improved other than labor costs.
- I seriously don't understand why, after over 20 years of shoddy outsourcing, anyone would ever greenlight this shit?
  I mean, even from a shareholder's perspective, unless I want to sell my stocks within the next year or so, I should oppose these stunts. And since most stocks are owned by institutional investors, that are kind of interested in long term growth, this should be a no brainer.
  
  unless I want to sell my stocks within the next year or so
  Favoring short-term gains over long-term value is exactly why this happens. Labor is often one of the largest cost centers in business, so shaving 10% off could potentially save millions in the short-term. Who cares if those gains eventually get offset or even eclipsed by losses in efficiency or innovation? I can just dump the stock/short it and leave someone else holding the bag.
  
  Insert "First Time?" JPEG here
  
  It should be, but there are plenty of perverse incentives, mostly about next quarter's profits, cashing out, seagull managers, loot and scoot executives, etc...
- Did you see it coming when you trained them or did it catch you off guard?
  
  We were given 6 months pay to do 2 weeks of work
- Even domestically, you'll always find some dumbasses willing to sell their entire lives to make ends meet. I know after my layoff from an environmental monitoring company, all the work my region was doing got shifted to a single team down in Kentucky who was already doing 12hr days. They're now doing 16-18hrs last I heard, 6 days a week because they're covering 3 separate states with 4 people, for 2/3 of the hourly pay I was making.
  This is a worker exploitation problem compounded by a short-term vs long-term thought process.

A company that lays off workers should be banned from hiring H1B workers for 10 years.
- Shit, I'd take something even simpler, even a 1 year moratorium after a layoff.
- I'd prefer killing the program entirely and opting for boosting immigration of talent to become permanent citizens.
  But as a second option, I really like this idea. Any company that sheds workers and then is crying about how they cannot find the talent among citizens is so obviously full of shit.

While there are obvious benefits to bringing skilled workers into the US, people are divided on the issue because those workers are often paid less than US workers, putting negative pressure on compensation, especially in the tech industry, on top of the moral questions about holding visas over the heads of foreign workers.
This is a good summary of H-1B issues. I don’t think they’re bad in principle since bringing in talent is great for the economy, but in practice they can be abused and push down wages of American workers.
- Which all comes from the temporary and restrictive nature of the visa. They’re tied to a specific employer and must leave the country if their employment with that company ends (or set up another visa with another company in a very short time).
  If these people represent deficiencies in our country’s skill set, then we should be welcoming them with open arms not locking them into an exploitative indentured servitude.
  Of course, removing the strong tie to a specific sponsoring employer would let them leave the company for more competitive pay and work environment, which makes the whole thing less appealing to companies. It’s also at odds with the idea of the visa serving to bring in extraordinary talent not available in the country. Needing extraordinary talent and skimping on pay don’t exactly go hand in hand.
- I think H1B should be reformed. We should still have set limit, but instead of picking people randomly to grant visas, the employers should have a bidding war and only grant visas for the employees that will receive the highest compensation. This will once again promote experts and also ensures they will be paid their true worth.
  Also the window to be able to find another job should be extended, to allow them to switch if they get exploited.
- This is a good summary of H-1B issues. I don’t think they’re bad in principle since bringing in talent is great for the economy, but in practice they can be abused and push down wages of American workers.
  A fairly obvious workaround to the obvious problem inherent in the scam that is H-1B is to kill H-1B dead and work towards enabling people to emigrate here as permanent citizens and fill in this supposed need companies cry about.
  Since the entire "problem" is mostly bullshit, that's not what the moneyed interests are trying to do here. They want to break the back of the American engineer.
- I would love to see a source of this claim from the article for high skilled jobs. The H1B application requirements are so strict that you cannot hire them at lower wages than US workers.
  This has more to do with replacing experienced workers in “senior roles” with new workers in “junior roles”, except with the same role expectations.
  But yes, it is the case that H1B holders are more willing to be knowingly exploited to work in junior roles and lower salaries despite being fully aware of the shitty company practices. They are simply trying to live in a country they moved to legally, often studied in universities here, were included in the same layoffs, have to pay off the same mortgages, and often pay more taxes than equivalent domestic workers because none of the tax loopholes are available to them.
  So why blame them when it’s the employers who are skirting the law by misrepresenting role requirements rather than H1B workers stealing jobs?
  
  I don’t think any reasonable person is blaming the workers. In my experience the employers do two things:
  They hire H-1B workers at the bottom of the pay range (or as you said misrepresent the job)
  They do a half-assed (or no-assed) job of trying to fill the position with an American. They’re supposed to post the job and take applications, but I worked for a large corporation (for less than 2 years because I couldn’t stomach the culture) that would just post the job internally on bulletin boards knowing there were no eligible internal candidates that would see the physical posting.
  This is definitely an employer abuse problem, not a candidate problem.

Only this time, it's real!
- "They" being some duplicitous Capitalist.
  
  Why the need to specify "duplicitous"?
- They have been doing it since the 90s, at least.

The continued disempowerment of American unions and American worker solidarity over many decades ultimately culminates with this overt power grab by American Capitalists. Others here have rightly pointed out that these foreign workers are fleeing their own capitalistic nightmares (oftentimes imposed on them long ago by an imperialistic western hegemony), and thusly are not truly to blame for wanting to come to America with the prospect of making a better life for themselves and their loved ones.
Even if some of them might be aware that their coming here and taking jobs for lower wages has a negative impact on domestic labor, their impetus remains the same: escape poverty, keep your head down, fulfill your employer mandated duties, and survive.
Let's not miss the forest for the trees here. As George Carlin put it, American coorporate business owners want only one thing from their workers: obedience.
"Well we know what they want. They want OBEDIENT WORKERS! OBEDIENT WORKERS! Just smart enough to run all the machines, and do all the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs..."
The long term model for Capitalists across the globe has been to cripple the rights of workers over multiple generations if necessary.
This is because they think we deserve nothing. The fact that they provide us the means to survive is something they feel we should be grateful for. But for us to ask, nay demand, to survive with dignity? That is blasphemy to them.
In regards to dignity, they see that as little more than a business transaction. How much profit did you make them last quarter is directly equivalent to the amount of dignity they will afford you, as long as you also bend the knee and kiss the ring every day.
They look to places like China or India with their terrible working conditions and worker compliance and salivate at a future where American labor is no different. They look to those same places and lust after the crushing of political dissent and resistance movements that exist there.
This is the model they are now bringing to the people of America. And they know many of us won't stand for it, but ultimately resistance movements are not preventative, but rather palliative, giving them the advantage of the aggressor. I've always said and truly believed, "Americans will never bend the knee for a King. Never."
But obviously I was wrong, and naive. Trump is forming his monarchy. America was born out of hatred for monarchs. Yet through our own vile prejudices, hatreds, and other weaknesses, we have plagued the world over with our ideologies through war, imperialism, colonialism. I know a true nightmare is manifesting here now. All that is left for us now is to go to our respective hills, and die on them.
EDIT: wording.

It feels like exploitation because it is
- And yet we are fine with it

Slaves. He's building an army of slaves.

Google has been doing the same. Hell, I reckon most big corps have

Their continued existence in this country is dependent on being employed. They will do what is asked of them. They have little choice.
There isn't a shortage of US skilled labor.
- They want indentured servants, not employees.

Is there any politician that actually stands up to tech? It's like a cheat code that not even Trump is immune to. Nobody wants to be politician who says no to those nerds who use "innovation" as a weapon. Except most of the tech industry is rather useless but everyone is too afraid to be accused of being tech illiterate. We're not losing anything by saying no to the 10000th buzzword salad tech company making yet another useless widget.

He was raised by parents who made their money on slave labour in an apartheid state, sooooo…

If anyone has watched the first season of Squid Game, this is precisely what the show has been making a point of. Both locals and foreigners are exploited by the owner-class. That being said, does Elon watch dystopian movies and shows and actually copies them for the lols?

Expanding the program is fine, but raise the fees. A lot. If there is a real talent shortage, companies should be willing to pay it right? /s
- Instead of choosing randomly, make companies bid with the salary offers and grant visa to the highest ones. I think that would solve a lot of problems with it.
  
  Also, if it's not already done, I like the idea of publishing all companies that have H-1Bs, the number of them, the job titles, and their complete compensation information for each one.
  
  I like it.

Before anyone gets mad at H1-B workers, you need to understand that a large percentage of them are being exploited to a sickening degree too.
- In a capitalist society I can't ever blame a member of the working class for seeking opportunity.
- Right, they often escape restrictive home countries to be able to live more freely in the US without fear of persecution. Hanging the threat of throwing them back to a system that would punish them for being who they are is cruel.
- Yes, I think most people realize that. That fact actually forms a large part of the argument against H-1Bs.
- This analogy isn’t exact, but there doesn’t seem to be much functional difference between them and scabs that cross strike lines. This is like the company fires the union/workforce before a strike to predatorily hire scabs. I know the system sucks for H1-Bs, but they’re lowering the quality of life for an industry.
  I agree with other posters that, in theory, this program is morally fine. However, its real world application is exploitation, for the previous workers & the new workers. I’m against exploitation and therefore do not support the program at the moment, especially with these immoral asshats championing it in this way. It’s mask off, “We can exploit them!” Fuck that.
  
  Scabs understand that there's a picket line and that they're acting against fellow workers.
  I don't think the people being recruited for 'jobs in the USA' know very much about US domestic politics, visa structures, or the possibility that they're being hired to replace layoffs. I would guess that most of them let the opportunity to get to the US, legally, and the hope that they can convert that to better status once there, outweighs all other considerations.

Lol. Lmao.

My first job straight out of college in the late 90s, I was making 35k a year (tech industry.) my boss was from France, H1B, making 30K, obvious reason is obvious.

This is what they mean by saying bring production to America. This is the plan for all workers because line go up. Yes, you.

So much for make America great again...
This was sarcasm if anyone was wondering
- Great for billionaires. Make workers desperate, scared, docile, and cheap.
  
  Come on now, this is all parody. No one was upset about H1Bs until two minutes ago when musk started infighting with maga.

These people and their ancestors have not paid taxes or contributed to the US in anyway. Younger people are struggling with the cost of life and now are being displaced by cheaper workers from India/Pakistan/Bangladesh/Africa who don't mind living in bad conditions and get paid unfairly.
- Are you purposefully playing the perfect rube? Exploited immigrants are not the bad guy here, the owning class is.
- They do pay taxes while they are working under the visa program: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/taxation-of-alien-individuals-by-immigration-status-h-1b#%3A%7E%3Atext=If+the+H-1B+alien%2Cunder+an+income+tax+treaty.

Huh, shocking.

As is (sadly) becoming tradition.

Capitalist doing capitalist things.

Tesla is shitty, that doesn't mean H-1B's are evil. Don't be so predictable and fight just because the people you oppose support something. That's just another form of control.
- The concept of the H1B is fine, but it is way, way, way overused by large companies. They're not evil, but the way they're handed out is just not enforced in any reasonable way.
  There are dozens of similarly-skilled US workers for almost every single H1B that's handed out in the tech industry. People on these visas are just significantly cheaper and will never, ever complain for fear of being deported.
  
  And why don't they want to be deported? H1Bs, as shitty as they are, are an opportunity for many. Sure, we should regulate them better but that's not where the fight is at. This debate you are having inside of a debate is pointless, fruitless, and is exactly what media would like you to do after having seen everyone coalesce around Luigi. This tatic is old and tired and you are tiring me out falling for it every damn time.
- I have a different perspective. Sure, we want talent in our country. Let's set aside that H-1B is an abusive program only a half-step away from indentured servitude. Can we agree that we actually want all nations' citizens to be healthy, well-educated, and high functioning? If we can agree on that point, we should work to enable and empower those workers in their home countries.
  This obviously requires other factors: penalties for offshoring, compulsory unions, strong unions, limiting corporate power, strong environmental protection... And while I'm dreaming, I still want an RC car for Xmas.
  But seriously, brain drain is real. And pulling talent from other countries is just colonization on a smaller scale, but with serious impacts for both countries involved. If US corporations can't compete without importing talent, all while refusing to invest in our citizens, they deserve to be consigned to the scrapheap.

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