Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., the biggest US sponsor of H-1B visas for foreign information technology specialists, says a civil rights lawsuit accusing the firm of bias against workers who aren\u2019t from India is all wrong. <\/p>\n
Three former employees claim they were forced out of their jobs and replaced with \u201cless qualified\u201d South Asians after being poorly treated by their Indian supervisors and colleagues, given unjustifiably low performance ratings and denied promotions. <\/p>\n
The company contends that what it\u2019s accused of isn\u2019t covered by federal civil rights law. <\/p>\n
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 \u201cprohibits discrimination on the basis of race, but plaintiffs\u2019 factual allegations, on their face, plainly pertain to a claim of discrimination based on national origin — not race,\u201d Cognizant said in a court filing. It also said the complaint is clearly targeted at \u201cvisa holders, but visa-status allegations have nothing to do with race.\u201d
\nBroader Backlash <\/p>\n
The lawsuit is part of a broader backlash by white IT workers against the visa program that allows U. S. companies to bring in foreign workers for job openings they say can\u2019t be filled otherwise. President Donald Trump tapped into this discontentment to capture the White House in 2016. <\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s \u201cBuy American and Hire American\u201d executive order, signed last April, seeks to ensure that American workers aren\u2019t unfairly disadvantaged by employers who allegedly abuse the H-1B visa program. <\/p>\n
US District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles said Thursday she would rule on Cognizant\u2019s request to dismiss the claims without a hearing. <\/p>\n
Cognizant received 29,000 H1-B visas last year, according to Homeland Security Department data, about twice as much as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., second on the list. The biggest U. <\/p>\n
S. technology companies, such as Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp., and Google Inc., are much further down the list with fewer than 5,000 sponsored visas each. <\/p>\n
TCS may have to face a class-action trial later this year in Oakland, California, by American workers who claim they lost their jobs because the company is biased in favor of South Asian IT employees. The same Washington law firm representing the workers from TCS and Cognizant is pressing similar claims against Infosys Ltd. and Wipro Ltd., two other IT outsourcing firms. <\/p>\n
TCS, Infosys and Wipro are all based in India. Cognizant\u2019s headquarters is in Teaneck, New Jersey. <\/p>\n
The case is Palmer v. Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., 17-cv-06848, U. S. District Court, Central District of California (Los Angeles).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., the biggest US sponsor of H-1B visas for foreign information technology specialists, says a civil rights lawsuit accusing the firm of bias against workers who aren\u2019t from India is all wrong. Three former employees claim they were forced out of their jobs and replaced with \u201cless qualified\u201d South Asians after being poorly treated by their Indian supervisors and colleagues, given unjustifiably low performance ratings and denied promotions. The company contends that what it\u2019s accused of isn\u2019t covered by federal civil rights law. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 \u201cprohibits discrimination on the basis of race, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-791519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bpo"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}