A California jury has finally cleared the charges leveled against the Indian multinational IT services provider, TCS, of discriminating against local American employees and giving preference to workers from India, who were brought by the Company on H-1B programmes.
This comes as good news for most Indian outsourcing companies. The jury cleared TCS of the allegations of benching and terminating non-Asian and non-Indian employees based on race. The Company was accused of using H1B and L-1 visa programmes (for intra-company transfer from overseas locations), for local hires, majority of whom belonged to South Asia; and of sidelining local hires when it came to promotions and other important employment-related decisions.
TCS claims and re-asserts that it will continue to invest in its people, train and empower them, irrespective of their race, background or national origin, for the ultimate goal of providing customer satisfaction.
Many Indian companies are facing legal issues in the US, following allegations of preferring workers brought from India—on temporary work permits / H1B— over local talent. With Indians and Indian companies benefitting the most from this programme, there has been a lot of political backlash.
The verdict comes at a time when the Trump administration has put in place rigid rules to further its ‘Buy American, Hire American’ campaign, to ensure that local talent gets preference for jobs.
