Cognizant’s Non-Indian Employees Harmed by H-1B Visa Approach

[Sam480]

https://news.bgov.com/federal-contracting/cognizants-non-indian-employees-harmed-by-h1-b-visa-approach

[perugu_vada]

Full of desis ye kada WITCH companies lo

ipudu konchem bhayapadi h1 ni pakkana petti h4-ead tho laagistunaru

[Coconut]

Plaintiff Palmer’s Experiences

 

25. Ms. Palmer has almost 20 years of advanced training and job experience in the IT services industry, including extensive senior management experience. She obtained a Bachelor of Applied Science degree from the University of Phoenix in 2005 and has also taken related courses at Pima Community College. She was hired by Cognizant in December 2012 and worked for three years in a management-level role overseeing client projects. Her main responsibilities included serving as a Consulting Manager across all roles, an Application Migration Manager, and a UAT Program Manager. Ms. Palmer first reported to Raj Swaminathan, a Client Partner, who is South Asian.

 

26. During her tenure with Cognizant, Ms. Palmer was repeatedly removed from her position servicing Cognizant clients and replaced with younger, South Asian workers. For example, in early 2013, Cognizant required Ms. Palmer to relocate from Tucson, Arizona to Cerritos, California to work for Cognizant client Caremore. However, just four months later, Ms. Palmer was prematurely removed from this position and replaced without any explanation by Kumar Praveen, who is South Asian. Ms. Palmer then relocated to Phoenix, Arizona, as requested by Cognizant, to perform work for Cognizant client United Healthcare. Just six months later, she was again prematurely removed from her position servicing United Healthcare and replaced by a South Asian employee, Avanthi Kalidindi.

 

27. In her manager-level role, Ms. Palmer oversaw the staffing of various positions servicing Cognizant clients. Ms. Palmer observed that Cognizant staffed initial clientbased roles with non-South Asian employees and later replaced these individuals with visa holding South Asians once the project was in good standing. The non-South Asians were then benched and forced to look for new positions within the company.

28. When Ms. Palmer needed an additional employee to service a Cognizant client, she would contact executive leadership. Cognizant routinely provided Ms. Palmer with profiles of South Asian employees available to fill the openings. On one occasion in early 2016, Ms. Palmer requested a specific non-South Asian employee out of Michigan who was a good fit for the Enterprise Architect role for Cognizant client BARD, but was told by Cognizant that an H-1B worker from India would assume the position instead, despite being unqualified for the role. On another occasion, upper management at Cognizant instructed Ms. Palmer to replace a non-South Asian employee who had been working for BARD for three to four months with a South Asian. Ms. Palmer was later instructed to replace a non-South Asian worker servicing Cognizant client PHH with a South Asian employee.

 

29. Despite being hired by Cognizant as a manager of client projects, Ms. Palmer was improperly reviewed as an infrastructure architect, and received unjustifiably low performance ratings from her managers. For instance, in early 2016, Ms. Palmer received a YEA of 3 on a scale of 1 to 5. Ms. Palmer contested this low rating, as she had served as an Application Migration Lead for Cognizant’s CIS Horizontal Division the prior year in Thousand Oaks, California. Ms. Palmer had performed well in this role, and her team sold and signed over $10 million worth of deals for Cognizant over a 5-month period. Moreover, Ms. Palmer was consistently sought out by other business units for help and education in the Cognizant Applicant Lead Migration methodology sold by the company. However, Cognizant refused to alter Ms. Palmer’s appraisal score and forced her to take coaching classes. Ms. Palmer never received a promotion from Cognizant, despite performing well with the company for three years.

30. Ms. Palmer was subject to a hostile work environment by Cognizant employees. Ms. Palmer was often the only non-South Asian employee at her work location and was intentionally left off meeting invites and not invited to group lunches or after-work events. For instance, when working in Cerritos, California for Cognizant client Caremore, Ms. Palmer’s manager, Mr. Swaminathan, would often invite the entire staff except Ms. Palmer to all-team meetings, and would exclude her from the meetings. In the few instances that Ms. Palmer was invited to team meetings, South Asian managers would turn their back on Ms. Palmer when she was speaking, and ignore her ideas and suggestions. In fact, in late 2015, during an all-team meeting with Cognizant client PPH, Ms. Palmer was told to “shut the f*ck up” by Dimple Shah, a South Asian Director from Cognizant, when contributing to the meeting.

 

31. In the fall of 2016, Ms. Palmer was assigned to a position servicing Cognizant client AGI in Phoenix, Arizona that was scheduled to continue into 2017. Despite performing well in her managerial role, Ms. Palmer was asked to relocate to Cleveland, Ohio so she could be replaced with a South Asian worker. Ms. Palmer’s project team, however, advocated for her to remain with AGI for the duration of the contract, and Ms. Palmer was allowed to continue with her work.

 

32. In December 2016, Ms. Palmer was forced to resign from Cognizant because of the company’s discriminatory practices and hostile work environment. Her last day with the company was December 9, 2016

[kevinUsa]

28 minutes ago, perugu_vada said:

Full of desis ye kada WITCH companies lo

ipudu konchem bhayapadi h1 ni pakkana petti h4-ead tho laagistunaru

I am Canadian should I consider my name too

[paaparao]

cognizant and cap gemini are evil. even after this much immigration control, they are moving jobs to Mexico and India. They never hiring in US.

[Sam480]

8 minutes ago, paaparao said:

cognizant and cap gemini are evil. even after this much immigration control, they are moving jobs to Mexico and India. They never hiring in US.

Witch companies are the most racist companies

[baabaa]

7 minutes ago, Sam480 said:

Witch companies are the most racist companies

Racist koda kadu anna. They are regionalist, casteist. 

[Sucker]

Fine katti biz as usual chestharu Dheeniki antha avasarama adhem new kaadhu kadha 

[Sam480]

4 minutes ago, Sucker said:

Fine katti biz as usual chestharu Dheeniki antha avasarama adhem new kaadhu kadha 

nothing new, but enthaku mundu ela chestaru ani evariki telisedi kaadu. eppudu news lime light lo ki coming

[Sucker]

52 minutes ago, Sam480 said:

nothing new, but enthaku mundu ela chestaru ani evariki telisedi kaadu. eppudu news lime light lo ki coming

Maa Prez ne Maa H1B supporter bochu eekutharu