An advocacy group for U.S. software programmers proposes an intriguing fix for a possible flood of H-1B visa applications.

The Programmers Guild is calling for guest worker visas to be given to companies pledging to pay the highest salary, with salary serving as a proxy for skill level.

“H-1B workers with the highest skills should be given priority,” the guild said in a statement last week. “In no case should a ‘Ph.D. genetic researcher’ lose out to a ‘$16/hour accountant.’ ”

Currently, the government uses a lottery system to decide which petitions will be approved for H-1Bs in the event of high demand for the visas, which allow skilled foreigners to work in the United States. There is an annual limit of 65,000 for most H-1B workers.

The first 20,000 H-1B workers who have a U.S. master’s degree or higher are exempt from the cap. April 1 is the first day employers may file petitions seeking H-1B workers for fiscal year 2009, which begins October 1.

For the last fiscal year, the H-1B cap was reached on April 2—the first day employers could submit petitions.

The guild’s proposal is part of a broader H-1B visa debate, in which some have called for raising the program’s annual cap.

Under the guild plan, the top salaries promised would get the H-1B visas subject to the cap of 65,000.

“Any business with a critical need for an H-1B candidate could be assured of approval by paying a higher wage,” guild president Kim Berry said in a statement. “Since the median H-1B salary is about $55,000, any H-1B paying more than about $65,000 would be approved.”

Making a high wage a factor for getting a visa potentially raises costs for employers. Small businesses in lower-wage markets in particular might be squeezed by such a change.

But the proposal could help make sure the sharpest workers come in under the H-1B program, which is used heavily by the technology industry. It also could help prevent the underpayment of H-1Bs, which undercuts the salaries of U.S. workers and makes it less likely that American workers will enter fields that now rely on foreigners.

A guild report from 2006 concluded the H-1B prevailing wage is substantially below the median wage of U.S. workers.

H-1B wage problems also surfaced in a 2006 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It found that 3,229 H-1B applications were certified by the U.S. Labor Department, “even though the wage rate on the application was lower than the prevailing wage for that occupation.”

The guild’s alternative to the H-1B lottery includes a second provision that raises tricky questions of national interest and global economics. The guild would give U.S. employers preference over foreign consulting firms. Critics, including the guild, have argued that use of the visas by foreign firms fuels the shift of work abroad.

At least when it comes to the salary piece, the guild’s alternative to the H-1B lottery is on the money, it seems to me. What do you think?

News that HR consulting firm Mercer forged a deal with an executive search firm in Vietnam is a sign of the times.

U.S.-based firms that pitch talent-related services see strong growth in Asia even as evidence keeps pointing toward a downturn in the U.S. economy.

Mercer, a unit of professional services firm Marsh & McClennan Cos., said Thursday, March 14, that it signed an agreement with TalentNet of Vietnam to market and provide Mercer’s proprietary research, HR management tools and survey data.

Guo Xin, deputy region head of Mercer for the Asia-Pacific region, said the agreement with TalentNet further underscores Mercer’s ongoing commitment to expanding in Vietnam.

“With Vietnam experiencing such phenomenal growth in the past years, so too has demand for Mercer’s offerings, particularly with data-driven products and services from our Information Product Solutions (IPS) division,” Guo Xin said in a statement.

I met with Guo Xin last year in Beijing  and heard him say similar things about China’s rapid growth and the accompanying demand for HR-related help.

Mercer is not alone in jumping on the Asia bandwagon. Right Management, the consulting firm that’s a subsidiary of staffing giant Manpower, last month announced new positions for two executives in Asia.

And executive search specialist Korn/Ferry International saw its executive recruitment fees  in the Asia-Pacific region jump 36 percent in the three months ended January 31, to $25.3 million.

That was a much faster clip than the 21 percent growth overall in the firm’s executive recruitment fees. What’s more, those Asia-Pacific placements had a higher profit margin—21.5 percent—than Korn/Ferry’s executive recruiting gigs in North America, Europe and South America.

But how long will Asia be golden? A big question right now is whether China, Vietnam and other Asian countries can avoid catching America’s economic cold. There’s some thinking the slowdown at hand will be fairly global in nature .

If that’s the case, all the diversification in the world may not do much to help U.S.-based talent advisors weather a rough patch.

China’s new labor laws are a step forward. But the country has an economic security problem that rivals the unraveling of the safety net in the United States.

These are among the nuggets that can be gleaned from a new report on China’s future labor market and the impact of new labor laws from the Adecco Institute, a research body affiliated with Swiss-based HR services company Adecco Group.

The 42-page study notes labor challenges facing China, including skill shortages in middle and senior management. The dearth of quality managers in China, and the related dilemma of promoting people too quickly, was central to an extensive Workforce Management report earlier this year.

 The Adecco report also gives positive marks to a new set of labor laws either ratified or under discussion in China. These include China’s new contract labor law. A draft of that law initially alarmed business leaders, but the end result—due to take effect in January—has received a warm reception from a range of observers.

 “Our Adecco Institute perspective is that the final versions of the new laws—given the major shifts in wording during the drafting process—are surprisingly well balanced between protection and flexibility, are generally a good “outcome,” and are an interesting example of China’s increasing openness to look and learn from foreign best practices and then adapt these to China’s circumstances,” the report says.

One of China’s pending labor laws concerns social security. But progress on that measure has slowed, according to the report. And the lack of universal social security benefits to Chinese citizens is a major concern, the report implies. China’s workforce is aging fast. And the current economic safety net is skimpy for many. “Social insurance offers low levels of protection and anyway still only covers a very narrow range of people and excludes much of the rural population, migrants to the cities, and many employed in private enterprise in urban areas (though numbers are increasing),” the report says.

What’s more, the existing social insurance system “serves to restrict the free movement of labor,” the report says, because “people are reluctant to shift from a high level of coverage in public sector enterprises to the private sector.”

Adecco’s report, therefore, is yet another voice noting the importance to business of a smart system of economic security for workers. Debate over that subject has been brewing for the past few years in the United States, as globalization and diminishing employment benefits have shifted risk onto individuals. China, with its fast embrace of capitalism from socialism over the past three decades, has created great wealth but also a good amount of economic insecurity and, according to the Adecco report, the largest gap between rich and poor in Asia. All told, the average Chinese worker probably faces greater odds than his U.S. counterpart of taking a hard economic fall.

Will China end up providing an effective safety net for its workers before the U.S. does?

In America, the concept of government playing a major role in guiding the economy is usually scoffed at. Industrial policy is thought to be a distasteful, counterproductive thing without a place in the free enterprise system. Except that the U.S. government does in fact support various industries, most famously the agricultural sector. And as globalization proceeds and more high-paying U.S. jobs are threatened by overseas competition, there’s an argument to be made for a stronger government presence in “picking winners and losers.”

Helping some sectors succeed through research funds, training programs and possibly even temporary tariffs isn’t just an approach that may appeal to citizens and workers keen for good jobs and a measure of economic security. Businesses, too, can benefit in the form of early access to new technologies and skilled employees.

Various agencies devoted to regional economic development do some of this already in the United States. But our efforts seem to pale in comparison to what a number of other countries have done. Consider South Korea’s treatment of the animation industry. A recent New York Times story about a new SpongeBob SquarePants episode noted that much of the animation for the cartoon was done in South Korea:

“In the 1980s animation began to migrate overseas because the labor was less expensive and because animated shows were not selling well in the United States. The labor is still somewhat cheaper, Nickelodeon executives said, but South Korea dominates in animation because the country has built an infrastructure for the practice while in the United States there is little formal training for animators.”

Indeed, the Seoul Metropolitan Government has named animation as one of Seoul’s “strategic industries.” The government-funded Seoul Animation Center  was founded in 1999, and its activities include “the operation of various educational programs in order to produce capable human resources, support for new talents and productions, organization of events and exhibitions including animation film festivals, and the operation of an efficient information center.”

In a recent blog item Salon.com senior writer Andrew Leonard ties the SpongeBob show to the way industrial policy has promoted economic growth in East Asia.

“Chinese and Indian animation studios are now undercutting the historical Korean price advantage in cartoon production,” Leonard writes. “But cheap labor isn’t the only key to surviving in the global economy. So is finding your niche. Why are SpongeBob cartoons made in Korea, even at this late date in the evolution of Korean economy? At least in part, because the government made it a priority.”

Cartoons may not be the right niche for America at this point. But certainly there are other possibilities, including various “green technologies.” It may be time for Americans—and American businesses—to take the idea of industrial policy seriously.

Seven workers died in Dubai this week in what may be a window into the seamy underside of global capitalism.

The workers were killed and 19 others were injured when a wall collapsed on a bridge construction project, according to Gulf News, a publication based in the United Arab Emirates. The U.A.E. is the federal government for Dubai and six other emirates. In an Associated Press story about the accident, the head of safety at a nearby construction site said workers on the bridge project were not properly equipped to ensure their safety because they did not have helmets, gloves, proper shoes or harnesses.

An official with the firm that employed the killed workers, Wade Adams Group, disputed those charges.

But it wouldn’t be surprising if the allegations of inadequate safety equipment are true, given Dubai’s dubious labor rights record.

Labor unions are illegal in Dubai, according to Agence France-Presse. The oil-rich, fast-growing city-state relies heavily on South Asian migrant workers, and advocacy groups have criticized Dubai for its labor rules and practices.

Despite strikes being outlawed, migrant workers at construction sites in Dubai—including the world’s tallest building, Burj Dubai—have been striking for better wages, according to Agence France-Presse. The news service reported on November 7 that the U.A.E. said it would “urgently” review wages of workers in the construction sector following the wave of strikes.

Such government intervention would be something of a reversal for Dubai. The government’s official Web site boasts that “Dubai’s economy has been kept open and free to attract investors and business. Government control and regulation of private sector activities has been kept to a minimum.”

Meanwhile, Gulf News reported that the families of the seven dead workers—all Indians—will get 10 years’ salary in compensation. According to the AP, a Wade Adams Group official estimated the workers each earned an average of $2,615 a year, for a total of $26,142 over 10 years.

I wonder whether the family members consider that “fair trade” in action.