The Indian tech giant maintains that lawsuit filed by four ex-employees lack merit.
Indian tech giant Infosys, which is fighting a lawsuit filed by four former non-Asian American workers over allegations of favoritism, has slammed a motion affirming that it has not discriminated workers on the basis of their origin.
Former workers of Infosys had earlier accused the company of giving preference to people of South Asian origin when it comes to hiring, promotion, and firing.
Infosys told a Wisconsin federal court earlier this week that the accusations made against the firm don’t have any statistical evidence for proving discrimination.
“Affirmative action documents that contain no relevant analysis do not liberate plaintiffs from the relevance and reliability demands of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals,” Infosys said.
“Nor does a ‘supplemental’ report from [plaintiffs’ expert] Dr. [David] Neumark that variously repeats and acknowledges flaws in his original report provide the missing evidence of ‘commonality’ across the proposed 75,000-person class,” the company added.
A lawsuit filed by Brenda Koehler, a non-South Asian US citizen, against Infosys in August 2013 alleged that the Indian company preferred South Asian workers to others when it comes to hiring and promotions.
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Later, Kelly Parker, Layla Bolten, and Gregory Handloser joined Koehler as petitioners and requested the court to certify three classes of workers affected by the alleged discrimination since August 2009.
- a) All non-South Asian or Indian workers who applied for a job at Infosys in the United States and weren’t hired,
- b) All such workers who worked at Infosys in the U.S. for 18 months and were not promoted, and
- c) All such workers who were employed by Infosys in the U.S. and were fired.
The case filed by the former employees of Infosys was largely based on the stats that claimed Infosys was biased towards foreign employees and favored South Asians.
One of the evidences produced by the petitioners was the finding of Neumark that says 90% of the Infosys workforce constitute of South Asians.
They also pointed out that the likelihood of Infosys hiring, promoting and firing by chance non-South Asian and non-Indian workers at the rates it does is “less than 1 in 1 billion.”
In the motion moved by Infosys, it claims that the petitioners also cited affirmative action reports by HR firm PeopleFluent to support their case but these filings are not available on the docket.
While arguing against the petitioners demand to set three classes, Infosys said the such a classification does not satisfy the standard for evaluating expert reports set by Daubert nor the standard for statistical analysis set in Wal-Mart Stores Inc. v. Dukes.
The Indian firm also added that the analysis of Neumark is flawed as it has failed to take note of the potentially non-discriminatory factors behind the personnel statistics such as the respective skills of applicants and workers.
“And beyond these errors, plaintiffs fail even to acknowledge the most obvious barrier to certification of this unprecedented, reverse discrimination class: they are using descriptive statistics not just to prove the discriminatory effect of a company-wide policy, but to establish the policy itself,” Infosys said.
Attorney Ellen E. Boshkoff, Rozlyn M. Fulgoni-Britton, Goerge A. Stohner, Gregory P. Adams, Lindsey M. Hogan and Dulaney Lucetta Pope of Faegre Baker Daniels represent Infosys.