Oakland, CA, February 21, 2017 – Plaintiffs Brian Buchanan, Christopher Slaight, Steven Webber, Seyed Amir Masoudi, and Nobel Mandili (“Plaintiffs”), represented by Kotchen & Low LLP, moved to certify two classes of applicants and employees who Plaintiffs allege were discriminated against on the basis of their race and national origin by Tata Consultancy Services, Ltd. (“Tata”). Plaintiffs seek to certify the following classes:
Hiring Class: All individuals who are not of South Asian race or Indian national origin who sought a position with TATA in the United States and were not hired between April 14, 2011 and the date of class certification.
Termination Class: All individuals who are not of South Asian race or Indian national origin who were employed by Tata in the United States, were placed in an unallocated status and were terminated between April 14, 2011 and the date of class certification.
Tata is an Indian-based company which provides information technology consulting and outsourcing services to clients in the United States and abroad. Plaintiffs allege that Tata engages in a systematic pattern and practice of discrimination against non-south Asians and non-Indians in hiring and employment decisions across the United States, including engaging in an express policy to employ and utilize visa workers “to the maximum extent.” As a result of the discrimination, Tata has achieved rates of hiring and termination that strongly disfavor non-South Asians and non-Indians. In fact, Tata’s workforce is so skewed that the chances of obtaining its percentage of South Asian workers by chance is less than 1 in 1 billion. Tata’s own employment data supports Plaintiffs’ allegations and establishes clear evidence of pervasive discrimination across Tata’s U.S. workforce.
Plaintiffs argue that Tata achieves its discriminatory goals by: (1) favoring “visa ready” individuals in India for U.S. positions; (2) closely tracking the benched status of its employees to ensure that its South Asian visa workers are given first priority for open positions; and (3) benching non-South Asian employees at a drastically higher rate than South Asian employees, and then terminating them. As a result of Tata’s policies, approximately 70% of its U.S. workforce is made up by visa holders, with virtually 100% of the visa holders being Indian nationals. Tata’s own head of diversity has recognized that favoring “visa ready” individuals for U.S. positions is discriminatory stating “citizenship or nationality should not be the basis for determining a person is fit against a particular position.” Further, when Tata uses third party recruiters for local hiring, the recruiters, consistent with Tata’s preference, supply Tata with primarily South Asian candidates.
A copy of Plaintiffs’ motion may be found at the following link.