Nielsen Trying to Import Cheap Labor
PILGRIM: Nielsen is the company that measures television ratings. It's replacing American workers with cheap foreign labor, and Nielsen, like many companies before, it's eliminating good-paying middle-class jobs by abusing the federal government's H-1B visa program. The biggest users of the H-1B visas are Indian outsourcing companies and now some communities are telling Washington they've had enough of seeing jobs in their communities outsourced to foreigners. Bill Tucker reports.</s>BILL TUCKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The city council of Oldsmar, Florida is not suffering quietly the sting of Nielsen's actions. The company is taking jobs away from American workers, giving those jobs to foreign workers on guest-worker visas, and requiring the fired workers to train them. Most of those jobs ultimately will be transferred out of the country.</s>GREG RUBLEE, OLDSMAR CITY COUNCIL: What Nielsen has chosen to do in exploiting the H-1B visa program by American standard is fundamentally wrong and it's fundamentally unpatriotic.</s>JANICE MILLER, OLDSMAR CITY COUNCIL: I am incensed that the American government would allow this to happen to the American people. This is all about driving down the wages in this country. To me, it's un- American.</s>TUCKER: Because of the uproar over the outsourcing, Nielsen says it will forego millions of dollars in tax incentives this year. It's been receiving those incentives for the past four years. Council members admit there's nothing more they can do aside from expressing their anger, they are calling on Congress and voters to wake up -- now.</s>ERIC SEIDEL, OLDSMAR CITY COUNCIL: It's a huge issue that's getting worse, especially hitting us at times when the economy is not very good. And so, I think, Washington, it's not to pass the buck, because I wish we had the authority to do something here.</s>SUZANNE VALE, OLDSMAR CITY COUNCIL: And another thing, people needs to be calling Senator McCain and Senator Barack Obama, and finding out what their stance is on this issue, because they're running for the president; they need to find out where they stand. This is important. Our jobs are going overseas.</s>TUCKER: Nielsen acknowledges the losses, but responds by noting that roughly 1,300 jobs will remain in the city.</s>TUCKER: However, critics of Nielsen and Oldsmar are leery of any promises or assurances from the company. They pointed out that Nielsen last October signed a $1.2 billion 10-year outsourcing contract with the Tata Consultancies. The deal not only includes informational technology support but operational support as well, Kitty.</s>PILGRIM: So, what's the reaction from the congressional representative?</s>TUCKER: It's really interesting. The entire city council is angry about this, the mayor says he's upset about it. We called the representatives, Senator Nelson, Senator Martinez, their congressional representative, Gus Bilirakis, none of them -- none of them returned our phone calls, and the best that we could get in way of a reaction from any of them was -- we'll look into it and get back to you. They haven't gotten back to us yet.</s>PILGRIM: One would hope they would look into it. Thanks very much, Bill Tucker. Well, nearly three months have passed and federal inspectors are still looking for the origin of a major salmonella outbreak. Now, the government says it is linked to tomatoes. It is now the largest salmonella outbreak associated with tomatoes in this country. We have the very latest from Louise Schiavone -- Louise.</s>LOUISE SCHIAVONE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kitty, still no end to the outbreak of Salmonella Saint Paul, with the Center for Disease Control reporting, 36 states and the District of Columbia are involved in what shaping up as a record outbreak. The list of confirmed cases is up to 810 with almost 100 hospitalized. Texas and New Mexico are the hardest hit with 342 cases in Texas and 85 cases in New Mexico. The most recent cases were registered on June 15th, indicating the outbreak is not yet over. Food and Drug Administration investigators headed to farms in Florida and Mexico last weekend in hopes of tracing the path of what the CDC believes was contaminated tomatoes. The strategy has been for FDA inspectors and regulators in Mexico and Florida to jointly visit growers and distributors and for the FDA to collect and analyze tomato samples. The FDA has not issued any recalls but officials strongly urge consumers to stick with tomatoes on the vine as well as cherry and grape tomatoes, none of which appear to have been implicated in this outbreak -- Kitty.</s>PILGRIM: This is a lot larger than originally reported, isn't it?</s>SCHIAVONE: That's right. It's up 200 from the number that we had just last week. So, it's obvious that, first of all, more people are going to their doctors and more doctors are going to authorities with laboratory results and so on. But the evidence is that people are still suffering some effects of something that's carrying Salmonella Saint Paul.</s>PILGRIM: And there's no recall yet. That's what is astonishing about this whole thing.</s>SCHIAVONE: That's the interesting thing, because, really, still, the FDA and the CDC, they don't have a sample of anything specifically contaminated. So, they cannot explicitly recall anything. So, they just have these very strong recommendations.</s>PILGRIM: It's unbelievable how long this is dragging on without any answers whatsoever.</s>SCHIAVONE: And what's interesting is that the people go to grocery stores and they say, "Oh, I've been looking at the tomatoes but I don't know whether or not I should buy any." I mean, this is something that grocers really have to get into mix and be able to say to their customers, "This is where these tomatoes are coming from. We know that these have been ruled safe by the FDA. These are farm- fresh." I mean, everybody has to sort of pitch in to educate consumers, because consumers want to consume tomatoes.</s>PILGRIM: It is summertime.</s>SCHIAVONE: Yes, that's right. They're just worried.</s>PILGRIM: Thanks very much, Louise Schiavone. Still ahead, the pro-amnesty crowd steps up it's protest against efforts to crackdown on illegal immigration. Also, former political rivals Senator Obama and Clinton campaign together for the first time. Three of the best political analysts in the country join me for more on that and the rest of the political news. Stay with us.