Lawsuit against Disney World misrepresentation of facts: Spokesperson.
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW YORK: The CEO of The New York Times company, Mark Thompson, is working on an H-1B visa in the United States, according to Walt Disney World.
Disney World spokeswoman Kim Prunty made this allegation in an e-mail statement to The American Bazaar, responding to a story published by the Bazaar on Monday on class-action lawsuits filed by two former tech workers of Walt Disney World, alleging discrimination in being fired from their jobs.
Read that story: http://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2016/01/25/h-1b-visa-is-abused-claims-lawsuit-by-former-disney-tech-workers/
The New York Times had first reported that the two former tech workers at Disney World, Leo Perrero and Dena Moore, filed the class-action lawsuits.
The duo claimed Disney, as well as two global outsourcing firms, HCL and Cognizant, colluded to break the law by using H-1B visas to bring in immigrant workers, knowing that Americans would be displaced from their jobs.
Prunty’s response to the Bazaar was to refute the allegations of one of the former workers of Disney World, Dena Moore, as well as to debunk the allegations made in the lawsuits, and to point out the fact that The New York Times too, among hundreds of other companies in the US, use the H-1B visa program to hire the best of talent globally.
Prunty said in her statement: “These lawsuits are based on an unsustainable legal theory and are a wholesale misrepresentation of the facts. Contrary to reports, Ms. Moore was offered another position in the company at comparable pay, and more than 100 of the workers affected by the changes were rehired. Hundreds of employers use the H1B visa program, including the New York Times, whose current CEO is working in the U.S on an H1B visa – a fact that it regularly fails to disclose in its reporting.”
According to Wikipedia, Thompson is a British media executive, who was the former chief executive of Channel 4. He is best known as Director-General of the BBC from 2004 to 2012.
The issue of the H-1B visa program, which has seen numerous attempts in Congress over the years – some successful, some not – to increase and downsize it, comes at a time when one of the biggest proponents and avid supporters of it, the former Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, is reportedly planning to run for the president of the United States.