Manager fired after refusing to pay techie from India lower salary.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: A former employee at IT giant Oracle has filed a lawsuit against his ex-employer, claiming he was wrongfully terminated when he attempted to question the company’s allegedly unsavory foreign hiring practices.
Ian Spandow was a senior regional manager in database sales, who was terminated from the company in December because, as he says, he stood against the company’s practice of paying workers from India substantially lower salaries than what Caucasians get paid for the same jobs.
Spandow proposed bringing over a seven-year employee from India to Oracle’s office in Redwood City, California. His higher-ups agreed, but when Spandow presented them with what he felt the employee should be paid here in the US, he was told that he had over-valued the salary – by as much as $50,000-$60,000.
As he tells it, when he pressed his managing sales director for a reason as to why paying the Indian employee less was okay, he was told that the lower salary was “good money for an Indian.” And when Spandow took the matter to human resources, he was told by them as well that paying an Indian worker substantially less was the status quo, and was perfectly fine at Oracle.
Originally from Ireland, Spandow himself came to the US on an L-1 visa, and settled down in California to work at the company’s Redwood City office. He is now claiming that his firing was due not only to his bringing attention the hiring and payment practices, but also for unlawful discrimination based on national origin.
The case, which has been filed in San Francisco federal court, bears marked resemblance to the recent Devyani Khobragade incident between the US and India. The US brought charges against the former Indian Deputy Consul General for paying her housemaid Sangeeta Richard, who she brought over from India, substantially lower than the minimum wage for New York City. Khobragade’s lawyers, and the Indian government, argued that it was an internal matter, and that Richard was being paid fairly by Indian standards.
Snafus like this will have to be ironed out by the comprehensive immigration reform bill, which Congressional leaders are trying to push through the House of Representatives as soon as possible, before the upcoming midterm elections dominate the 2014 political slate.
House Speaker John Boehner has given indications of late that he’s willing to come to the table regarding immigration, giving hope to the notion that the bill could see serious movement sooner rather than later.
3 Comments
It looks like Modern Slavery.
Companies are not bringing employees from around the world to pay them the same as U.S. citizens, it’s all about their bottom line. In fact it’s so much cheaper to set up a 2.8 billion sq ft Oracle office in India, train Indians and bring them over on h1B visas, than to simply hire American. Think about it. If it wasn’t they wouldn’t do it. Companies get 3-5 workers for the price of 1. The difference is the American worker isn’t smiling while they’re getting screwed and pushed out of jobs and asked to train their replacements. Once the Indian workers get to America they don’t want to leave and they keep their mouths shut out of fear, even after they learn about the higher cost of living in America, and higher wages paid to Americans. In large part we can thank the U.S. legislature for punishing American business with over taxation of American companies and creating h1B visas in the first place and driving them abroad in search of the last cheaper resource, the foreign worker. It’s the same reason everything is made in China. Exploitation is relative. Depending on where you are sitting it looks different.This all reminds me of an interview I watched on TV with Carly Farina and her disdain toward the American worker when the reporter asked her about the outsourcing of American jobs, it was palpable. American workers had to suck it up. I thought at the time it’s all fun and games to her until they outsource American CEOs, and look they have… lol Soon the Indian workers will organize, create a foreigners union and demand equal pay. It’s inevitable. But before that happens the company will make a shit ton of money, and then they will find another resource, and Indian workers will be training their replacements soon enough. The moral to this story is don’t sign an anti compete clause, then you can simply start your own company and drive the old one out of business. There’s a reason American wages for the same job haven’t gone up in 20+ yrs, and now you know.
yes i will aggre for terms&conditions i will ready to work from any where