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Dear {name},
It’s been a heck of a week, but I’m happy to share good news! On Tuesday, a Los Angeles jury unanimously decided that Cognizant, an India-based consulting company that employs an army of foreign H-1B visa workers predominantly from India, had actively discriminated against its American workforce.
According to San Jose Mercury News journalist Ethan Baron, “the lawsuit claimed Cognizant ousted many non-Indian workers by first taking them off projects and “benching” them without work, then keeping them benched until firing them in accordance with a company policy.”
Cases like these are difficult to prove but in this one the evidence against Cognizant was overwhelming. The plaintiffs’ lead attorney Daniel Kotchen argued, if you were to see terminations of two standard deviations between one set of workers and another, you could infer the presence of intentional discrimination. “In this case, the standard deviations unrebutted by Cognizant - were 75!” Statistically speaking, the chances of this case not being discrimination were a billion to one.
Commenting on the verdict, John Miano, an attorney and Fellow with the Center for Immigration Studies, said, “The term “on the bench” developed among H-1B nonimmigrants employed by body shops who were not assigned to projects. It is a common, but unlawful, practice for employers to not pay H-1B workers who are on the bench, something not at issue here.”
Four years ago, we released a video outlining why employers are more likely to target their domestic workers for layoffs. These include: an H-1B worker’s hours cannot be reduced, nor can they be benched. After 60 days they’ll require a new visa to be issued and the employer will incur legal fees to rehire them. In addition, the employer may have to pay for the worker’s travel back to their country of origin, and the H-1B worker cannot collect unemployment insurance. All in all, they reveal a clear set of incentives for employers to retain H-1B workers. |
