A former Cognizant employee has won $8.4 million in a lawsuit alleging hiring bias against Cognizant that the company only favors Indians and fires Americans.
A former Cognizant Technology Solutions employee has gone to court alleging hiring bias by the company, as he was laid off in 2016 after working at the company for a decade. Jean-Claude Franchitti said his dismissal came after he questioned the IT major’s cheap labor model, as he observed that the company was preferring cheap labor from India.
In 2016, he had a $350,000-a-year role and was fired. A federal jury in Manhattan sided with Franchitti and awarded $8.4 million — $4.2 million in back pay for lost wages and an additional $4.2 million in punitive damages. Franchitti now teaches at New York University.Franchitti said he signed off on several letters that Cognizant fraudulently used to help secure U.S. visas for Indians. The letters attested that employees would report directly to him at the Cognizant location in New Jersey, but he soon realized that those positions listed in those letters did not even exist and that the employees would not report to him.
He also claimed that Cognizant was applying for L-1 and B-1 visas, since the H-1B was more expensive.
And those who were angered by the H-1B did not receive the required wages.He claimed that non-Indians were promoted less and faced hostility from Indian employees.While he verbally raised questions about these practices, he claimed that he was fired without prior notice or benched. Cognizant rejected these accusations.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis responded to the ruling and said he was pleased Cognizant was held accountable. “The lengths to which some of these companies go to discriminate against Americans in favor of cheap foreign labor is truly alarming,” DeSantis said. “I’m glad to see some accountability. But the easiest thing to do is simply end the visas that provide the path to discrimination in the first place.”
