Pfizer Trains Foreign Workers As IT Replacements
8 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // November 3rd, 2008 // 8:40 am
The drugmaker has been training foreign workers in its Groton and New London, Connecticut, R&D facilities over the past few months in anticipation of transferring much of its IT work from local contractors to outside contracting firms, according to The Day.
The sources insisted on not being identified because they didn’t want to be fired or lose a chance for re-employment. Some were hoping to retain their jobs, and all were speaking with the expectation that, if the upcoming changes at Pfizer are publicized, the drugmaker may reconsider its decision to drastically reduce its local contracting force, the paper writes.
The new policy, known internally as Procedure 117, will force many contractors, or ‘contingent workers’, some of whom have been working at Pfizer for a decade or more, to leave by year’s end, sources tells the paper. Pfizer would not comment on what it called speculation and gossip. ”These rumors are distracting and hurtful to our colleagues who are working together to deliver a pipeline of new medicines in areas of unmet medical need,” a Pfizer spokeswoman tells the paper.
Pfizer has between 800 and 1,000 contractors on site locally during any given day, along with about 5,400 employees. More than half of the IT workers in Groton and New London are contracted rather than being Pfizer employees, sources said. Pfizer would not give a number for its IT work force.
At the same time, the paper writes Pfizer is adding foreign workers, mostly from India, who are arriving at R&D headquarters on controversial H-1B visas. These special visas were created to allow foreign workers to take jobs in the US that could not be filled by Americans, but Pfizer has been using them to replace American workers, sources tell the paper. “We’re training them,” one source says.
Pfizer will not reveal how many H-1B workers it retains locally, though one source put the number at anywhere between 50 and 100. But scores of other foreign workers have been cycling through the local campuses over the past several months in anticipation of moving much of Pfizer’s IT functions overseas, sources tell the paper, though recent developments indicate the company may be pulling back from some of these plans.
Many of the Indian nationals are employed by Indian-based service providers such as Infosys Technologies and Satyam Computer Services and then leased to Pfizer at rates in many cases much lower than American contractors have been making, according to The Day.
One source tells the paper that a local technical writer might earn a rate of $65 an hour (but pocket only $40 an hour, with the contracting firm getting the rest), while an employee of Infosys working locally on a Pfizer project might be paid $35 an hour (but pocket $20 to $25 an hour, with the Indian service provider earning the difference). An offshore technical writer would get even less, according to sources, perhaps $17 to $20 an hour.
Source: The Day
Reviewer
This is exactly the same thing that is happening at FDA.
Harass and/or fire FDA reviewers who won’t simply go along with Pharma.
Train 2000 foreigners under Von Eschenbach’s Fellowship program, retain to replace the 200 US citizens who have been forced out and send the rest back to their come country to do pharma outsourcing.
Why do you think Kindler (Pfizer CEO) and others have been complaining about FDA needs to upgrade its’ science. It’s an excuse for this training program.
The ones who stay even hire other immigrants from their home countries for secretarial and administrative positions by abusing the special hiring authorities for Ph.D. scientists. (Look at some of the support offices for Psychiatry).
Our tax dollars even go to sending FDA personel to India to train these contracting companies to take American jobs. Just do a search on Mehul Mehta and DIA.
LILLI
Reviewer—Thanks for the information.
Frustrated in CA
This is exactly the same scenerio that I’ve witnessed and was forced to do at Sun Microsystems.
Personally I had to train my Indian counterpart on everything I did in a matter of couple of weeks.
Typical
And the same scenario I have witnessed.
There are many things we can do in response. We can begin by boycotting Pfizer’s goods.
Christopher
How has (proper) use of the H1B visa destroyed US competitiveness in the world? If the visa brings in workers with exceptional talent to work in US industry doesn’t that strengthen, not weaken competitiveness? I see your point but I don’t think it’s just foreign workers that have contributed to the weakened US position.
Paul
This is happening all over the STEM fields. This flawed “discrimination visa” H-1b has been used to utterly destroy US competitiveness in the world. Students in the US would be idiotic to enter the uneven playing field of these career paths. Most importantly, note how neither political party wished to have this issue part of today’s election. Business rules and just stop and look at what that has wrought. Would anyone want to take a drug developed by a worker whose indentured to the drug maker for positive results no matter what. FDA is indentured to special interest to pass drugs through trials no matter what.
A. M.
They bring technical writers and software engineers via these visas. With all of the unemployed IT workers (partially due to H1B and offshoring), how can one say, with a straight face, that this is about bringing in the best and the brightest.
After working with many of these “best and brightest” (in Groton) from India, I can safely say that this is driven by cost cutting motivation and has little to do with quality or bringing in the “best and brightest”. It has everything to do with replacing the “best and brightest” Americans.
As I have said in other venues, Pfizer may be a “great” company, but it is no longer a “great” American company.
G.C.
Agreed, I “trained” (in about a 2-3 week span) 2 Satyam resources to replace me, neither who had a handle on the language or any pharmaceutical or SLC background. Ironically, thanks to the fall of Satyam, they may never get paid. They will probably just move on to another offshore company and continue to be paid by American dollars. After all, America is the land of opportunity - if you’re Indian.