US IT Worker Files Hiring Lawsuit Against Infosys, Class Action Proposed 684
itwbennett writes "Brenda Koehler is a VMware-certified professional network engineer with a master's degree in information systems and 17 years of experience. You might think that would qualify her for a lead VMware/Windows administrator, but Indian outsourcing firm Infosys apparently didn't. And Koehler has filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that Infosys ignored her qualifications and eventually hired a Bangladeshi worker to staff a position she was qualified for. Koehler and her lawyers are asking the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin to allow a class-action lawsuit against Infosys, with 'thousands' of potential plaintiffs in the case, according to the lawsuit, filed Thursday."
Smoking Gun? (Score:2, Interesting)
I find it interesting that they are claiming Title VII instead of violation of H1-B rules, presumably because this way they can point at a systematic exclusion of Americans on a non-technical basis. Of course, when discovery happens, and people start to pop out of the woodwork...
Master's degree in information systems (Score:5, Interesting)
"Master's degree in information systems and 17 years of experience" does not tell us that she was more qualified than the Bangladeshi hired. I have interviewed too many people who look good on paper only.
Re:Basis for discrimination (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Basis for discrimination (Score:5, Interesting)
The plaintiff doesn't have to do anything of the sort. The plaintiff doesn't even have to prove that she is more qualified than the person they ultimately hired, merely that she was qualified for the position. H1B and the like require you to hire locally if possible first.
Re:Basis for discrimination (Score:5, Interesting)
You might be surprised... see, if they're hiring H1B workers, it means they're implicitly claiming (under the laws that allow H1B work visas so you can hire foreigners in the first place) that NO SUITABLE TALENT could feasibly be found state-side. If it can be proven however that they regularly pass over US citizens for the sole reason that H1B workers are the more cost effective option, they're probably going to be facing heavy fines at the very least. Its quite possible they will be in a lot of trouble and the court case will precipitate the type of more heavy restrictions on granting of H1B visas in the first place.
Re:Basis for discrimination (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought so too, but then I read the complaint. They claim harassment on basis of national origin.
At one job, the Asian workers left messages for (non-Asian) American workers threatening them and their families if they made trouble, etc. The Asians weren't just working cheaper. They were harassing the Americans. It sounded like they really didn't understand American culture.
There was also an element of anti-American discrimination.
The complaint also argues that they got H-1B visas by certifying that there were no available American workers, when it wasn't true. They also certified that they would pay Asian workers the prevailing wage, when that wasn't true either.
Re:Master's degree in information systems (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe everyone here who complains constantly about the abuse of the H1B system can kick a few bucks her way to compensate for the risk she's undertaking to advance their agenda.
Re:Basis for discrimination (Score:5, Interesting)
My company recently adopted a no H1-B visa policy because we're doing a bit of military work, or so I assume (they really don't tell me anything). We've had a rec open for a hot-shot algorithms geek since January, and trust me, the applicants are not beating a path to our door. This is a fantastic job for the right guy, and it kills me that we're having trouble finding someone to fill it.
The last super-algorithms programmer we hired was from IIT Madras. He's amazing. Before that, we hired an equally amazing white guy right out of college with a BS degree. Good talent is hard to find right now, which is why I think this class action lawsuit is doomed. Maybe it could have gotten some traction in 2010.
Shameless plug: if you're a super-geek, work well with others (so many of us don't), and live near RTP in NC, or Winston-Sallem, send me a resume.
Re:It's about time (Score:5, Interesting)
It's all a scam to save money.
Sort of. Hiring H1-B applicants is a pretty expensive process and definitely a pain in the butt. Granted, the workers don't get to see as much of the cost of hiring them, but there are a lot more middlemen involved who each take their cut.
What's really going on is replacing "free labor" citizens with what amount to indentured workers who basically can't quit. It means that when you decide "The entire tech department will now work 85 hours a week", you don't have the exodus of employees that you will get from citizen workers who (rightfully IMHO) won't stand for that sort of thing.
It's not just about money, it's also about control and convenience for management.
Re:Master's degree in information systems (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:wrong choice (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked at a place that wanted to use a single recruiting firm, and asked us to try to hire positions through infosys. The candidates were consistently poor. Really, really poor. I met someone at a friend's house who had applied to my company for several open spots in the previous year. He was asking why he had never gotten a call back, and why we kept re-opening the reqs, or if the turnover was that high. When I saw his resume, it turned out to be exactly what we were looking for, and a price we were willing to pay. It turned out that Infosys was interested in trying to fill $80/hr spots with $30/hr talent, or worse. They were consistent, and I dont blame it on race, but on pure profits over good business. They lost our account.
Re:This is trouble (Score:5, Interesting)
Even for those of us who support expanding legal immigration, they are pretty terrible poster children. Infosys and the like give H1-Bs a bad name which then drags the legitimacy of the whole system down with them. More respectable tech companies like Google and Microsoft do have sporadic abuses, but for the most part they use the system much more like how it was intended to be used. It would be nice to find a way to tailor the system more towards them, cut the Infosyses out of the game, and then expand a cleaned up H1-B system.
One approach could just be to put an absolute salary floor on H1-B positions. If you're willing to offer someone $120k, I have a lot more confidence that this is actually a job in demand that fills a critical gap in the U.S. economy, versus if you aren't willing to pay more than $60k for this supposedly impossible-to-fill position.
Wipro and Infosys, undermining the US Economy (Score:5, Interesting)
It's great to see this kind of thing. I hope she wins, honestly. She's got an uphill battle ahead of her.
What a lot of people don't realize is that Wipro and Infosys buy influence in this country, that's how they've been able to game the system and get away with it for a long time?
Ultimately we need to restructure the H1-B system so that it allows companies to get the talent they need without all the middle-man broker approach and doesn't exploit workers from abroad and keep wages down and unemployment high in this country. We don't need to hire Kindergarten teachers on H1-B visas. http://www.myvisajobs.com/Visa-Sponsor/Fort-Worth-Independent/202267.htm [myvisajobs.com]
Really? Fort Worth ISD? Come on you can't find a qualified US resident to teach?
Also, the immigration reforms that seem largely stalled now have some things in it that are making H1-B mills a bit nervous, I say good!
Even in their own country, Wipro, Infosys et al are viewed as "Selling Indians abroad." So it'll be great to see how this case evolves.
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-04-23/outsourcing/38762361_1_h-1b-immigration-reform-indian-it [indiatimes.com]
Take a look at the comments.
Re:Basis for discrimination (Score:3, Interesting)
Depending on its implications, it sounds like your "for the right guy" qualifier might be the problem. Maybe your corporate culture needs to learn to deal with people who aren't readily willing to be emotional tampons in order for your company to gain reliable access to more of that kind of intellect. Superbright people, rare as they are, rarely fit in those politically correct, passive aggressive, corporate drone square holes..
Top quality desis no longer apply for H1B ... (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand there are plenty of second, some third or even fourth grade engineers still enchanted by USA. They still apply and they are the ones most slashdotters disdainfully make fun of as poor quality desi programmers.
I would not go back, no matter what pay they offer and how many cooks, drivers and maids I could afford over there. Once you get used to the clean water and clean air, and reliable electric grid, it is difficult to readjust. But next generation of me are not coming here. Sadly. It would benefit both USA and them. And those who are still willing to come damage USA and damage the reputation of all Indians, all for a fistful of dollars.
Re:This is trouble (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Shocked!! ...not shocked (Score:5, Interesting)
Problem is, people have to do things like file lawsuits to change this, exactly what this story is about.
It's difficult in general to be sure you were discriminated against in order to file a lawsuit. If you only hear about it you can't file the lawsuits yourself. If you're a customer of these firms you can't file lawsuits since you're not the one being discriminated against, the most you can do is stop doing business with them.
And some people just don't want to cause problems. I was at a firm where one Indian QA woman applied for a job in the next building as her position was being cut, and the other group said she was qualified but because she didn't speak Vietnamese they couldn't give her the job. I told her to immediately go and complain to HR as this was an over the top violation of the law, but she said she didn't want to cause any problems for anyone.
Re:Basis for discrimination (Score:4, Interesting)
I think too many aren't aware of any "market rate". And they also don't truly appreciate having a talented developer on their payroll, which is why they would rather get one of few barely qualified employees and hope the dev does something right while getting paid 20% below market (or worse) than have to sift through a stack of resumes, pick out the most qualified applicants, take time to properly interview them, and make decisions that to them all seem like expenses with no return. And if not to whoever is doing the hiring, then to that person's superior.
tl;dr: it's my opinion that so many companies don't appreciate paying for or retaining a great development team.
Age discrimination too. (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing I noted in working with Infosys is that they require your high school graduation date.
Not evidence you graduated.
Not the year you graduated from college.
I'm sure they think they are being cute, but I hope that they get burned hard for it someday.
How dare she sue! (Score:5, Interesting)
But not to worry the conservative SCOTUS in conjuction with tort reform and a proper realignment of labor laws will soon put an end to that. We can't have individuals oppressing corporations because, after all, corporations are people. If workers want to be treated as people they shouldn't be workers. They should choose to be wealthy.
Re:Basis for discrimination (Score:5, Interesting)
The beauty is that we do all the work for them just by being our usual elitist snobby selves. I'm not sure how many people have been sent packing just because they don't know some piece of jargon or aren't familiar with the latest trends in some relatively ephemeral technological zeitgeist, in the hopes that Candidate will immediately become useful within the first week of employment.
Being a "VMWare/Windows Administrator" strikes me as relatively irrelevant compared to MS IT + 17 years, which should be enough to suggest that this person is competent in her field, and can learn to administrate just about anything, if she's motivated. But I'm sure if she doesn't know in the interview how to optimally configure a redundant VMware server, she's hopelessly lost... I mean that's like rocket science right there. Or something. We're not hiring people, we're hiring wikipedia pages, and due to all the jargon and groupthink, mostly vandalized wikipedia pages.
I'm not sure how this person plans to prove discrimination, I have no doubt (having been on interviews designed to hire H1Bs), that she was thrown into a ringer designed to make her look inferior to someone who got the questions ahead of time, and did the research ahead of time. The irony is that I've survived these interviews, fielding questions from database design to maxwell's equations applied to PCB designs, but the ultimate trump card is suddenly the job you're interviewing for is suddenly a more junior position, and suddenly the pay is less than what the job description might IMPLY (no salaries/grades given!). Then of course you say no and they hire the H1B anyway, because the qualified American wasn't interested. There's no winning. These people SHOULD be sued, I just lack the faith that they'll get what they deserve.
Re:Top quality desis no longer apply for H1B ... (Score:2, Interesting)
They still apply and they are the ones most slashdotters disdainfully make fun of as poor quality desi programmers.
They deserve to be made fun of because they suck at their jobs and ruin what otherwise might be decent entry or mid level opportunities for qualified American programmers.
Re:Basis for discrimination (Score:5, Interesting)
Frankly, you're either grossly uneducated, or a troll. Either way you're showing your ignorance.
Just because you might know a little C or ASM does not give you the right to sneer at talented developers who chose different platforms. Go here and tell me these people aren't "real programmers": http://www.chromeexperiments.com/ [chromeexperiments.com]
Guess what: I code in C and asm, I hand solder my own boards. I write cross platform drivers for Windows and Mac. I'm reasonably proficient in probably every language you've ever heard of, from Clipper to RPG (on the AS400) to Java and .Net and I've been doing it for about 17 years now professionally, longer as a hobby. And you know what? I choose to spend 90% of my current development time in Javascript, both in the browser and in NodeJS.
Hopefully one day, if I work really hard and keep trying, maybe I can be considered a "programmer" in your book.
Re:Basis for discrimination (Score:5, Interesting)
Sapient hired about 2,000 staff in India last year too. The Boston-based company has 65% of its total workforce of more than 10,100 based in India.
"About 35% of our people are hired locally [in markets the company operates]," Mr. Endow said. "That's a very healthy mix."
However: Sapient has only about 1,500 US employees, [boston.com] and at least one-third to one-half of those are here b/c of visa sponsorship. [myvisajobs.com] (Consider that an H1-B lasts for 3 years -- extendable up to 6 -- and 2013 isn't even over, yet.) So:
It's about time! (Score:5, Interesting)
I have been watching this happen in Silicon Valley and other tech regions for years. It's an abomination and it's about time that it stop! I have seen L-1 visa holders from India who are here for "university studies", go to a place like Heald College for six months, come on board as *full-time* employees, with benefits (while professional non-Asian-Indian American IT professionals *with experience* were hired on as contractors). THen, I watched as the full time Americans with rock-solid skills got riffed after training the L-1 visa holder who didn't know jack, and *still* didn't know jack after a long training period.
I have seen these H1-B, L-1 and several other visa holders come to work on the first day and start hugging and chumming around with senior Asian-Indian supervisors who were their *relatives or friends* from back home.
I have watched as Asian Indian supervisors treat their American (and Indian) subordinates like chattel, not to mention looking right through female employees.
I have seen Asian Indian "consulting" groups establish domestic US connections so that their workers can claim "experience with a US company for 1 year", thus enabling the visa holder to emigrate to America.
I have listened to the likes of Bill Gates, John Chambers, Mark Zuckerberg, and many others LIE about the shortage of qualified American IT workers.
I have talked to DOZENS of IT peers who have been out of work for more than a year because every time they aplpy for a position thety are talking to guess who? - an East-Asian-Indian recruiter who can't speak clear English, does not have a clue about what the requirements are for the position, and spouts nonsense from the their doctored RPF's that list skills like "must know C++ and Ruby" for a BASIC QA position. Are you kidding me?
Now, our corporate overlords and these corrupt Indian companies (including the Indian government, whose corrupt officials are on the take from American corporations) want an increase in the H1-B quotas that would double those quotas AND let the spouses of these mostly UNQUALIFIED H1-Bs get an immediate right to work in America (which has not been possible by current rules). Are you kidding me.
The entire Hi-B whine is a SCAM, and a LIE, and a TRAITOROUS double-cross of the American IT worker, and other workers who would LOVE to have the same opportunity as an L-1 worker who doesn't know crap, and still won't know crap after s/he's trained.
Last, outside of IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) why don't we hear about the PATHETIC level of instruction and talent that comes out of most of India's other universities, where professors don't even show up, and make their real $$$ arranging private tutorials with students that can afford to pay for private lessons. Why? Because the immoral, corrupt leaches that run the Indian government don't give a rat's ass about their own people, just like the corrupt, immoral leaches in the American government.
Lawsuit will be thrown out but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you know the latest game infosys a-holes play ? I have been a victim of this ploy. First off they use third party, pond-scum Indian operated recruiters to make their bids, so nothing sticks to them. I am not sure how this lady got into talks with these people at infosys, directly. But anyway, infosys runs the support shop for Cisco Systems and they were looking for a UNIX heavy guy with some TCP/IP networking knowledge and they found me through some site, where I posted my resume. FIrst off the bat, they low-balled the initial offer for working in San Jose. They offered me something like 10% less money than, what I was making at my last position in Southern Cali. which is another 20-some percent cheaper to live compared to the bay area. But, considering it is better than living on an unemployment check, I agreed to interview. After about 3 or 4 botched calls by them, I had the *pleasure* of talking to an infosys employee, calling me from India, for about 30 minutes, who did the *technical* interview to judge my UNIX expertise level with few easy questions, which, someone who installed linux and played with it for a couple of days can answer. Then I got a call back from the secondary, pond-scum agency, telling me that, I past my tech-screen with flying colors. No-shit-Sherlock... I have been a UNIX sysadmin for more than 20 years and he read a book about it ?? Anyway, they wanted to offer me the position but, the BIG BUT, infosys renegotiated the rate and they have to scale back the already low hourly rate by another 15%. At that point, I told the guy to go pound sand. And I am sure, for the money they were thinking about paying, they hired an indian UNIX sysadmin, who didn't mind sharing an apartment with 5 or more others like himself.
Maybe, just maybe, we the American IT workers should play their game and force these three clown companies from india, by filing lawsuit after lawsuit, even if it is going to be rejected. The problem is, we do not have the deep pockets. Maybe organizations like groklaw and EFF should consider mounting such a campaign. Operating on the outskirts of the law, doesn't necessarily mean that, they have the right to rape the American IT sector.
Re:It's about time! (Score:5, Interesting)
Can't you just use Indian instead of Asian-Indian?
Re: H1 Visa applicants are less expensive (Score:5, Interesting)
Senior IT manager here. It's not just in America.
The problem is that most managers don't give a shit. They are under enormous cost pressure, and standing up for principles and employees costs time and energy, especially when you're being given a hard time by your upper management.
Most of the time, they're not around for long enough to suffer the long-term consequences of creating a million monkey club.
Even worse, usually it's based on false cost models - the same sort of crap that leads you to hire (more expensive) external people rather than salaried staff because they're "variable cost". Budgeting for external suppliers often does not include additional costs for facilities, travel, management overhead, training, etc., as well as the intangible aspects of a body shop simply providing you with the cheapest shittiest junior guy they can get away with - and then refusing to do anything but the work that's exactly laid out in the contract (and badly at that).
I've run into this situation myself a number of times and it is morale-crushing.
Re:wrong choice (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to be a tech interviewer at a large UK technical consultancy in the 2000's and we frequently received CV's from Indian nationals that you could hold up to the light and see that the CV's were exactly the same and had exactly the same cut 'n paste text. This led to a pretty massive review of the recruitment process.
We also discovered fake UK companies setup purely to "employ" young middle class Indian graduates so they could get their Visa and then jump over to a large UK firm. These firms were on their CV's with faked up job roles - it was a total abuse of the visa system.
Abuse, not discrimitation (Score:4, Interesting)
It sounds to me like you're pretty much arguing that the work visa a a really cool business model. WHEN IT'S BEING USED CORRECTLY.
My "saga":I have a few years ago worked for a very large American company. And in my country, admittedly, there are about 50 times the number of IT jobs available compared to the amount of unemployed IT people (Bachelor degree equivalent or higher education).
this puts (and still does) a higher price on talent. And i've benefitted from that, certainly. I wont deny that. But I've ALSO been taking paycuts to finance improving working conditions, re-educating obsolete talent and a few other things.
So I was appauled when I found out that MY company, whom I had worked for for over 10 years, had started, not only "importing" foreign labor, but underpaying them, AND lying about it to the government (otherwise they couldn't get a visa, if the salary officially wasn't high enough), AND forcing the hirees to pay a "deposit" of roughly 2 years salary, payable to the company should the hirees, for ANY REASON be dismissed from their work within the first 2 years of their employment. downright blackmail.... They underpaid, they lied and cheated the government and their own employees. I immediately handed in my resignation and found a new job. Sure the new place didn't have the benefits I had fought for over the last 10 years, but at least the new place was honest about it.
And the new place also hired foreign talent, but did it according to the rules, and only because staffing was a pain, and took forever.
Bottom line: There are liars and cheats out there who will do anything for a buck, but there are also businesses who will act morally, legally and ethically correct. The trick is to be able to tell them apart. And I believe that if the OOP is in the a situation where someone else was hired under the rules, at his/her expense, then that's just tough luck. If that person was hired, bending the rules, then it's abuse of power, not discrimination. I see many problems with this type of hiring, but I do not see a discrimination suit being won...