> The Los Angeles case began after three employees who identify as “Caucasian” claimed in a lawsuit that Cognizant made a practice of giving preference to South Asians in employment decisions. The plaintiffs alleged they were terminated after being “benched” with no work for five weeks and then replaced by “visa-ready” workers from India set to be deployed to US projects and assignments.
This is apparently a NASDAQ traded company with a market cap of nearly $38 billion (https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/CTSH/). It looks like they've placed H-1B holders at Bay Area employers ranging from Google, Meta and Apple to PG&E, Kaiser Permanente and Walmart.
I get that this company may be exploiting loopholes in the visa system or acting in unethical ways to import workers. But assuming those workers are legally able to work in America, is it really illegal to replace existing workers with cheaper ones? Isn't that a freedom employers have? How could that be considered discrimination based on ethnicity? That seems like a judgment based on the outcomes (equity) rather than evidence of discrimination based on race (as opposed to the cost of labor).
The lawsuit itself seems to be making a case based on "disparate impact" rather than clear evidence of discrimination:
“Cognizant has used policies and practices related to hiring, promotion, and termination of individuals that have had a disparate impact on the basis of national origin and race (harming those who are not of South Asian race or Indian national origin) that are neither job-related for the positions at issue nor consistent with business necessity”.
Yes. You may only legally hire an H1B visa holder for a role if you can demonstrate that you made a good faith effort to hire an American (technically someone with full right to work in the US) and couldn’t.
It’s no secret many companies don’t come close to meeting that standard hence the ramp up of enforcement on those violating the terms of these visas. A green card holder would have the same right to the role as a US Citizen but an H1B visa holder is only a secondary option if others couldn’t be hired.
That's addressed by a different part of the regulations, I think it's called "prevailing wage determination," they set a minimum to avoid that problem. But I'm sure they have ways to exploit that too.
However, these workers typically aren't very well qualified nor well matched/experienced in the stack/industry/etc, so sub-100k is arguably justified even if they were US workers.
While they may be legally able to work they are paid significantly less than their US citizen/resident counterparts. That's the labor arbitrage on which Cognizant and their kind (E.g., Infosys [1]) thrive on. They typically send workers on 1-2 year assignments who live on pittance and in at or below poverty level conditions. But compared to India they (workers) make better wages and come out of their assignment with a decent savings so they are OK. And also US-returned is on their resume which is a plus.
How would they accumulate savings if they're living below poverty level conditions? I'd guess lots of them living in very cramped shared living spaces, but even then?
> I'd guess lots of them living in very cramped shared living spaces
Yes, this primarily + no eating outside, no car, entertainment, no family expenses etc., To answer larger question USD-INR difference is how they make most money. Wages in India are so low that even 1/5th of US wage is near top 5-10% in India. For similar reasons lot of Indians move to Dubai and Gulf region to build a decent wealth in 4-5 years. I think India ranks near the top w.r.t. inward remittance [1], ~$125B in 2023.
Fun story; my manager at FAANG told me how it's common to open a head count in the US and close it soon citing not being able to hire and open 4-6 heads counts in India for the same budget. That should give you some idea about wage and currency disparity.
I don't know how they do it in the US, but in the UK it works like this:
* Rent a house near the office that the contract is in. Transport costs are zero because staff can walk to the office.
* Put 5-8 people in the house. So rent is 1/5th of what it would be for the locals
* Arrange communal food where someone cooks a meal for everyone, so food costs are significantly reduced.
* House is fully furnished. Including everything in the kitchen, TVs, etc. So there is no need to go and buy 'stuff'.
* It gets a bit exploitative, but heating costs can also be drastically (and uncomfortably) reduced.
Given the right assistance (housing, food, etc) and being prepared to have a miserable time (not going out, no travel to big cities, no weekend breaks, bland food, crowded living) it is possible to live frugally. This gives significant local competitiveness while being able to save in a home currency.
It's the same thing as firing older employees to replace them with younger ones that will ask for a lower salary. The goal is to reduce salary expenses, but the way that happens is discriminatory.
I once, in the EU, applied to a role at Cognizant.
The application process was on-line, fill in a form, then submit and you get a page come back saying you've applied - but no confirmation email, no application ID, nothing.
I wanted some confirmation of application, so I tried to contact Cognizant.
This turned out to be impossible.
I won't go into the long-winded details of all the ways in which trying to contact Cognizant fails; but it was in fact literally impossible to contact Cognizant and say "did you get that application?" and it was all down to simple, basic incompetence at Cognizant - broken email addresses, phone numbers listed but which did not exist, no responses at all from such contact methods that did work, and so on.
I never heard back from them about the role, which had been advertized and then re-advertized, for a hard to fill skill set, and that was odd, because I'm a experienced specialist in a field where there is a profound shortage of staff; my suspicion, given the problems contacting them, is that they messed it up.
Additionally, I've come since then to have a sense that large consultancies probably take something like 50% of the payment being made by the client, as opposed to the usual 15% or 20% of a recruitment agency.
This is apparently a NASDAQ traded company with a market cap of nearly $38 billion (https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/CTSH/). It looks like they've placed H-1B holders at Bay Area employers ranging from Google, Meta and Apple to PG&E, Kaiser Permanente and Walmart.
I get that this company may be exploiting loopholes in the visa system or acting in unethical ways to import workers. But assuming those workers are legally able to work in America, is it really illegal to replace existing workers with cheaper ones? Isn't that a freedom employers have? How could that be considered discrimination based on ethnicity? That seems like a judgment based on the outcomes (equity) rather than evidence of discrimination based on race (as opposed to the cost of labor).
The lawsuit itself seems to be making a case based on "disparate impact" rather than clear evidence of discrimination: “Cognizant has used policies and practices related to hiring, promotion, and termination of individuals that have had a disparate impact on the basis of national origin and race (harming those who are not of South Asian race or Indian national origin) that are neither job-related for the positions at issue nor consistent with business necessity”.