Three U.S. Citizens Sue TCS Over Alleged Bias Towards Indian Workers

Three U.S. citizens have sued Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), alleging that the Indian IT company prefers Indians and South Asians over American workers. The three employees of two different companies have asked for jury trial and sought punitive compensations from TCS. 

Darryl Stacy, Donald Stephan Bradley and Hesham Hafez filed a complaint in the District Court of New Jersey last month, alleging that TCS prefers to bring employees on visa even when trained U.S. citizens are available in the country, the Economic Times reported. They also accused the company of discriminating against them and favoring Indians and South Asians while hiring locally.  

“TCS’ president for North America Surya Kant and vice president and head of human resources Narasimhan Srinivasan devised and implemented a nationwide ‘leadership directive’ to utilize TCS’s visa-ready South Asian employees (also known as ‘expats’) to the ‘maximum extent’ when filling US positions,” the complaint said, according to the report.  

The company has denied the allegations as “baseless,” saying that it “is confident that it will successfully defend itself,” a TCS spokesperson told ET in an email.

“Indeed, the federal court in California previously rejected a class-action for hiring discrimination by the same law firm concerning TCS’ hiring practices, citing the same issues,” the spokesperson added. 

TCS had earlier got embroiled in a legal battle over alleged discrimination overseas in 2015, when employees of a company named Southern California Edison accused it in an anti-American bias case, which is in pre-trial stages. 

Another case was filed in 2016, in which a U.S. citizen alleged that TCS discriminates against employees on the basis of race, gender and national origin. This case was dismissed in February 2017.  

It is also not the only Indian company facing such allegations. An ex-employee of HCL Technologies in the United States filed a lawsuit last month, accusing the firm of preferring South Asian workers over Americans. Earlier this year, another U.S. citizen accused Indian technology firm Wipro for engaging in a practice of systematic termination of work of its American employees, in favor of Indian workers. 

These allegations from U.S. workers come at a time when the Trump administration is stressing over its “Buy American and Hire Americans” executive order. It has also enhanced scrutiny over issuing H-1B visas and directed officials to apply the same level of scrutiny for H-1B visa extension requests as the other sought-after visas.