14 DAY TRIAL // Having missed revenue estimates by $900 million in the second fiscal quarter of 2009, Microsoft announced a series of cost-reduction measures, beginning with laying off a total of 5,000 employees over the course of the next 18 months. 1,400 jobs were cut in January 2009 alone and, as a direct consequence, the Redmond company received a letter from Iowa Senator Charles Grassley, which urged that the software giant put American workers in a privileged position over foreign employees on H-1B visas, shielding them when it came down to cutting employment. Microsoft responded indicating that this would not happen. This because all Microsoft employees will be impacted by the layoffs.
“We know that the job reductions will impact non-Americans who hold jobs outside the United States, as well as both visa holders and U.S. workers inside the United States. The majority of Microsoft’s workforce is made up of U.S. workers, and therefore the majority of jobs eliminated in January were held by U.S. workers. Workers on H-1B visas and other temporary work visas make up only a small percentage of our overall workforce, but they were also among the employees impacted by the reductions announced in January. Employees outside the United States were also impacted,” revealed Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft general counsel.
Smith revealed that no less than 800 jobs out of all the 1,400 positions that were cut at the start of the year were in Washington State. The company's general counsel explained that layoffs had been and would be correlated with the distribution of jobs both in the U.S. and abroad. In this context, H-1B employees would be affected in the same manner as U.S. citizens working for Microsoft in the U.S., but at a smaller scale in accordance with their percentage compared to the total 90,000 strong workforce.
“H1-B employees have always accounted for less than 15 percent of Microsoft’s U.S. workforce, the level that is used in immigration law to determine whether a company is “H-1B dependent.” Nonetheless, the ability to tap into the world’s best minds has long been essential to our success. Although they are a small percentage of our workforce, H-1B workers have long made crucial contributions to Microsoft’s innovation successes and to our ability to help create jobs in this country. We are confident this will continue to be true in the future,” Smith added.
The company's general counsel underlined the fact that its percentage of H-1B employees would in fact be smaller, but for the government's failure to process permanent resident requests at a faster pace. Smith indicated that multi-year delays in the process of awarding the permanent resident status for non-U.S. citizens are responsible for foreign workers continuing to be dependent on H-1B visas. “We do not expect to see a significant change in the proportion of H-1B employees in our workforce following the job reductions,” he said.