NEW DELHI—The U.S. Department of Labor is
investigating whether Indian outsourcing companies Tata Consultancy
Services Ltd. and Infosys Ltd. have violated American labor laws,
the companies said Friday.
U.S. authorities are trying to establish whether the Indian
companies broke the law when their engineers—who were in
America on temporary H1-B work visas—were allegedly
brought in to replace American workers who were being laid off, the
companies said separately.
The investigation comes in the wake of a complaint by 10 U.S.
Senators—including outspoken critics of the
skilled-worker visa system Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat,
and Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa—claiming
U.S. power company Southern California Edison allegedly brought in
engineers from Indian outsourcing companies and then laid off U.S.
citizens.
In an April letter addressed to Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez,
the senators said that the IT workers at Southern California Edison
were replaced by employees of "foreign-owned IT consulting
companies."
"To add insult to injury, many of the replaced American
employees report that they have been forced to train the foreign
workers who are taking their jobs," the letter said.
Southern California Edison responded at the time that it would
"cooperate with any related investigation." The company said it
planned to reduce its 1,400 person IT staff to 860 by mid-2015. But
only 30 of those employees would be in the country on H1-B visas,
the company said.
Calls and emails to a spokesman for the Labor Department weren't
returned.
A spokeswoman for TCS said the company "maintains rigorous
internal controls to ensure we are fully compliant with all
regulatory requirements related to U.S. immigration laws including
those related to H-1B visas."
Infosys said it has also followed all the rules.
"Infosys is committed to complying with U.S. immigration laws,"
the company said in a statement.
U.S. regulations prohibit using workers on H-1B visas in a way
that would "adversely affect the wages and working conditions of
workers in the United States similarly employed."
Write to Sean McLain at sean.mclain@wsj.com
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