Accenture to pay $500,000 to software engineer from India over discrimination in wages

Indian worker claimed in lawsuit he was paid less than American workers.

A former software engineer from India, who claimed he was paid less than Americans, working for the Indian technology services company Accenture, has settled a class action suit before it went to trial, with the company agreeing to pay up to $500,000.

Details were yet to come in of the case which Accenture settled out of court, according to documents filed in New York state court. However, the case has wider ramifications pertaining to the 85,000 H-1B visas given out every year, including 20,000 for students who graduate from US universities.

The Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has given ample hints in his campaign speeches that he wants to shut down the H-1B visa program for foreign workers, or at least to modify it so that it does not allow American workers to be replaced by cheaper foreign labor.

By settling the case with the software engineer from India, Accenture seems to have given some basis to Trump’s allegations. A class action suit if it had gone forward would likely have brought up more such cases to light.

Accenture has been in the legal spotlight over the past few years.

Last year, H. B. Fuller Co. won a $12.8 million arbitration case against Accenture, after a fallout over contract obligations in implementation of new enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. An arbitrator in Minneapolis also ruled that H.B. Fuller did not owe another $1.4 million in fees, bringing total damages to more than $14 million.

In 2001, Accenture paid the United States government $63.675 million to resolve a lawsuit regarding fraud, illegal commissions (kickbacks), and rigged bids.

The lawsuit by the Justice Department alleged that Accenture submitted or caused to be submitted false claims for payment under numerous contracts with agencies of the United States for information technology services.