It’s only been two weeks since news of the layoffs at Disney’s Park and Resorts broke out, which was followed by cries of revoking the H1-B Visas being given to workers coming from Asian countries through outsourcing giants like – Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and HCL America, among others.
Employees of Disney ABC Television Group would be breathing a little easy after the plans of axing close to 30 IT employees were nixed. The IT professionals were notified three weeks ago that their jobs would be terminated and their roles would be outsourced to Cognizant Technology Solutions, but last week that decision was reversed after all the furor over the sacking of 250 IT jobs a few weeks earlier at Parks and Resorts.
According to a few media reports, the negative publicity received by Disney over the elimination of jobs in Parks and Resorts, primarily in Florida, led to the decision of reversing the decision of laying-off 30 employees at ABC Television. And now as a measure of winning back some lost trust Disney has promised to hire 320 IT professionals in the US, which will mean that it will employ 70 more people than it had prior to the layoffs at Parks and Resorts earlier this month.
A few media reports also suggest that the fact of Disney forcing laid-off employees to train the workers who’d be doing their former jobs, only applied to a few of the employees, who too were paid a ‘stay bonus’ over their severance in exchange for their cooperation and time.
A few highly placed Disney executives have stated that the company uses H-1B Visas very sparingly, as in ‘just to fill holes’ and the company doesn’t really believe in using such means in the near future as well.