Tata Consultancy Services found not guilty of using discriminatory hiring practices against Americans, rules US jury

^{(Photo Source: glassdoor.co.in)}

• A jury in California has cleared Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) of accusations that it used discriminatory practices against American workers.
  
• The verdict is of much importance to TCS as it depends heavily on engineers in India.
  
• TCS was sued by four of its former employees, accusing the company for firing them because they weren’t South Asians.

A US jury has ruled in favor of India’s IT outsourcing giant, Tata Consultancy Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), in a lawsuit alleging the company had followed discriminatory hiring practices against American workers.

The verdict came as a sigh of relief to TCS as it relies heavily on the skills of Indian engineers.

In September, TCS was sued by four former employees who alleged the company discriminated against them because they weren’t South Asians, first sidelining and then firing them. The claim was rejected by a federal jury in Oakland, California after a week-long trial on Wednesday, Mint reported. The four employees had alleged that nearly 80% of TCS’s workforce was from South-Asia -- which is much more than the general share of South Asians in the U.S. IT workforce.

This was the first major Indian IT outsourcing firm in the US to go under a trial.

In its defence, TCS reportedly argued that it found it difficult to retain local workers because of their unwillingness to migrate to other cities in the US, where TCS requires engineers, said the report.

There are also cases pending against other Indian IT companies as part of a class action lawsuit including Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies and Cognizant.