TCS faces a lawsuit by an ex-US employee for 'favouring Indians, South Asians': Report

India's largest IT firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has been sued by one of its former employees for allegedly discriminating against non-South Asian and non-Indian applicants and employees. Shawn Katz, the complainant, has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey on December 7, Moneycontrol reported on Monday.

Katz, who worked for the company for nine years before being sacked, claims that the software exporter company has a systematic pattern of discriminating against non-South Asian and non-Indian applicants and employees with respect to hiring, staffing, benching, termination, and promotion decisions and that this policy is implemented top-down at TCS.

The complainant has accused TCS of not promoting him for nine years despite meeting the qualifications for promotion for several years straight. He claims that he was recommended for promotion by both managers and client companies, but was moved to the bench and then fired, the report said. During his time on the bench, he claimed the company did not provide him with 'meaningful assistance.

Katz's lawsuit alleges that while only 12-13 per cent of the US IT industry is South Asian, approximately 70 per cent of the Indian company's US workforce is South Asian and is primarily composed of non-citizens from India who are in the US on work visas. Calling it grossly disproportionate, he said this is the result of TCS' employment discrimination against people who are not South Asian or Indian. 

"TCS’s discrimination is systemic and ongoing, and impacts non-South Asians and non-Indians across the company, as well as applicants, who are disfavored in TCS’s hiring, staffing, promotion, and termination/retention decisions,” the complaint reads as per the report.

This is the second time TCS has been taken to court on the charges of 'discrimination' against non-South Asian workers. In 2015, the company faced similar charges but it won the case, with the court concluding that there was no 'pattern or practice' to discriminate against Americans.