Fired Americans say TCS gave their jobs to H-1B visa holders
Employees file complaints saying they were discriminated against based on their race and age
AU.S. visa program for skilled foreign workers has long stoked concerns over American workers losing their jobs to lower-paid foreigners. Now a group of experienced American professionals is accusing an Indian outsourcing giant of firing them on short notice and filling many of their roles with workers from India on H1-B visas.
The American workers say that India’s Tata Consultancy Services illegally discriminated against them based on their race and age, firing them and shifting some of their work to lowerpaid Indian immigrants on temporary work visas. Since late December, at least 22 workers have filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against TCS, whose clients have included dozens of the U.S.’s biggest firms.
The American former TCS employees are Caucasians, Asian-Americans and Hispanic Americans ranging in age from their 40s to their 60s and living in more than a dozen U.S. states. Many have master’s of business administration or other advanced degrees, according to the complaints, which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
While companies often conduct layoffs that affect workers with more seniority, the American professionals say TCS broke the law by targeting them based on protected characteristics of age and race. They say the company’s move demonstrated preferential treatment to Indian workers in the U.S. on the coveted visas.
A TCS spokeswoman said allegations that the company engages in unlawful discrimination are meritless and misleading. TCS has a strong record of being an equal opportunity employer in the U.S., acting with integrity in its operabruptly ations, she said.
The complaints revive questions about how Indian IT companies use H-1B visas. The visas are designed for skilled foreign workers but have for years led to concerns that Americans are being displaced by cheaper foreign workers with lesser qualifications. Companies apply for visas on behalf of workers and aren’t required to demonstrate that Americans with those skills are unavailable.
Mumbai-based
TCS, part of the
Indian conglomerate Tata Group, is India’s largest IT services firm by revenue, with more than 600,000 global staff, mostly in India.
Although the company generates about half of its revenue in North America, it typically employs a much smaller workforce in the U.S., comprising staff who often have face-to-face meetings with clients there.
The Washington, D.C.-based EEOC enforces federal laws that prohibit discrimination in the workplace and can pursue federal charges. An EEOC spokesman declined to comment, citing confidentiality.
The agency last year sued Tesla , alleging Black employees were subjected to racial harassment and a hostile work environment. Tesla has said it “strongly opposes all forms of discrimination and harassment” and has a record of disciplining and terminating employees who use racial slurs and engage in other forms of misconduct. Cases brought by the EEOC can lead to financial penalties.
Many big U.S. tech firms such as Google, Microsoft and Meta , which have different business models than outsourcers, use the H1-B visas to employ staff who attract high wages , and have come under less criticism. Congress allows roughly 85,000 new H-1B visas a year, with applications often far outstripping that number.
The former TCS workers say that, despite years of positive reviews and often bonuses for their work for clients in areas such as finance, operations and supply-chain management, they were taken off projects last year.
Many say TCS management thwarted their efforts to find new assignments at the company, even when asked by clients to continue on their projects, and were then terminated. Some said the work they were doing was taken over by younger, less-experienced Indian nationals on H-1B visas.
In their complaints, the former employees cite comments that TCS’s global human resources head Milind Lakkad made in an interview with Indian media last year. He said TCS is trying to reduce the number of Americans it employs in the U.S. and would like to provide more opportunities to Indians there, according to the report.
One former worker said in a complaint that TCS human-resources staff told employees in an all-hands meeting that the company planned to use money saved by closing down a unit that employed many of the American workers to provide jobs to more Indian nationals in the U.S. “TCS has a significant issue on its hands,” said Peter Bendor-Samuel , chief executive of Everest Group, a Dallas-based firm that advises companies on outsourcing, referring to the complaints. “The law is largely on the employees’ side,” he said.
In the run-up to the 2016 election, Donald Trump promised to tighten American borders, sometimes assailing the H-1B system as a “cheap labor program,” while at other times saying the U.S. needed highly skilled workers.
When he was in office he proposed an overhaul of the H-1B program that would have made it tougher to qualify for the visa, though a federal judge later struck down two of the new policies.
In October, the Biden administration proposed changes to how the H-1B visa lottery is run after the government found that companies had colluded to try to increase their chances of securing visas.