Thread: DC Renews Obamacare Website Contract For Company Accused Of Discriminating Against Am

DC Renews Obamacare Website Contract For Company Accused Of Discriminating Against Americans

JOSH FATZICK
Reporter

The Council of the District of Columbia voted Tuesday to extend the contract to build the city’s Obamacare exchange website to a company that is being sued for allegedly discriminating against American workers.

In 2013, the district awarded a $51 million contract to the India-based company Infosys Public Services Inc. to implement the city’s health benefit exchange marketplace. The website is intended to allow D.C. residents to shop between competing insurance plans, though it hasn’t yet launched.

A lawsuit filed in 2014 by four former Infosys IT workers claims that the company intentionally discriminated against Americans in hiring and promotions, in favor of “South Asian individuals.”

The complaint alleges that around 2011, Infosys began a deliberate effort to purge non-South Asian employees in its United States offices and “engaged in a systematic pattern and practice of discriminating against non-South Asian employees and in many instances replacing them with South Asian employees.

Some members of the council, though, were unaware of the lawsuit facing Infosys when they voted to extend the company’s contract.
Councilman David Grosso, who voted present because he is opposed to the council’s role in approving contracts, said he didn’t have time to look at it.

“Mr. Chairman, given the fact that this is a $51 million contract and I haven’t had time to really invest in studying it, I’d like to be recorded as voting present,” he told Council Chairman Phil Mendelson. He then reiterated the amount of the contract. “Fifty one million dollars.”

Tiffany Brown, a spokeswoman for Councilwoman Yvette Alexander, who introduced the legislation, said she hadn’t heard anything about the lawsuit, but people in her office would look into it.

“I know that hasn’t come across our office,” she said.

Layla Bolten, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, claims Infosys interviewed her in its Washington, D.C. office to be a “Test Lead Analyst,” but instead hired her as a “Test Analyst,” which has considerably less responsibility and pay.

Bolten claims she was passed over for multiple promotions because she was not Indian, and she was routinely harassed because she did not speak Hindi.

Just three of the 100 employees working on D.C.’s healthcare exchange website were American, according to the complaint. Demographic data Infosys reported to the federal government showed that of Infosys’s 59 offices in the United States, 21 have 100 percent Asian employees. At 53 of the 59 offices, at least 94.5 percent of employees are Asian.

Another of the plaintiffs in the case, Kelly Parker, alleges that in 2012 she was contracted by Infosys to provide IT services to Harley Davidson. In 2013, Parker claims the company decided not to hire her permanently and terminated her contract in favor of an Indian worker who “Parker herself had trained and moved to Tomahawk to replace her.”

(Related: Disney Forces Tech Workers To Train Their Foreign Replacements)

In May, Infosys moved to have the discrimination lawsuit dismissed, and while a federal judge dismissed some of the plaintiff’s claims, she ultimately ruled that the central claim of the case could proceed.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/06/02/dc...nst-americans/

Infosys also provided the workers from India who replace the American workers at Southern California Edison.

H-1B visas are supposed to go to foreigners who possess skills that American workers don't have. But the American workers at Southern California Edison discovered, they actually had to train their replacements. I believe that Southern California Edison was successful at getting the American workers whom they fired, to also sign some kind of non-disclosure agreement, so that info about Americans having to train their replacements would not be widely broadcast.

This practise actually started at tech companies in the Seattle area a couple of decades ago. Then and now,
American workers are afraid of being blacklisted by prospective employers.
***********************************
Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade

Infosystems should be prosecuted for organized criminal behavior and lying to the FBI. They should also be barred from operating in the United States.

Hillary Clinton is in with Infosys also.

Obamacare Opens Outsourcing Window for Infosys: Corporate India

by Kartikay Mehrotra

January 17, 2013 — 7:33 AM CST



Students walk through the Infosys Ltd. Global Education Centre campus in Mysore, India. Obama’s demand to build the exchanges and maintain electronic health records may help Infosys and rivals counter slowing business from banks and factories. Photographer: Namas Bhojani/Bloomberg

Jan. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Infosys Ltd., India’s second-largest software exporter, is tapping demand from U.S. President Barack Obama’s push to overhaul the nation’s health-care system to include an additional 30 million Americans.

The Bangalore-based company has won four state contracts, one valued at more than $100 million, and is vying for business in four more before a 2014 deadline to build online exchanges that will link customers to insurance plans, said Ashok Vemuri, the head of the company’s unit in the Americas. Obama plans to expand medical coverage through the Affordable Care Act, which includes setting up marketplaces where consumers can evaluate and select service providers.

Obama’s demand to build the exchanges and maintain electronic health records may help Infosys and rivals including Accenture Plc counter slowing business from banks and factories. Spending on health care may exceed that for defense and social security by 2015, according to Christopher Flavelle, an analyst at Bloomberg Government. U.S. states governed by Obama’s Democratic Party could lead the change, Vemuri said.

“The U.S. government is cutting defense spending and increasing health care expenditures, which is of great benefit to us,” Vemuri said in an interview. Governors of Democratic states, such as Illinois, may “take some initiative,” he said.

The exchanges are designed to allow consumers who don’t have medical coverage from their employers to easily compare health plans and then buy insurance online and through telephone services. The marketplace will help the federal government subsidize the cost for those who can’t afford coverage while increasing the number of Americans who qualify for health insurance.

‘Biggest Challenge’

“The biggest challenge facing the states in 2013 is information technology,” PricewaterhouseCoopers said in a report this month. “Many are overhauling their existing Medicaid eligibility systems and designing an exchange infrastructure to create a single, seamless entry point.”

Infosys is following Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. and HCL Technologies Ltd., founded by billionaire Shiv Nadar, in seeking customers in the segment as the European debt crisis and a sputtering economy in the U.S. prompt banks to slow spending on information technology. The World Bank yesterday cut its global growth forecast for this year as austerity measures, high unemployment and low business confidence weigh on economies in developed nations.

Cognizant earned 25 percent of its revenue from writing code for drugmakers and state agencies in the quarter ended Sept. 30, while the industry accounted for 11.9 percent of HCL’s revenue in the three months ended Dec. 31. Banks and finance companies made up 35 percent of Infosys’ sales in the three months ended Dec. 31, while health care was 1.5 percent.

Not ‘Fast Enough’

“Infosys just haven’t been fast enough to tap the health-care industry, which is why their share of revenue is so low,” said Harit Shah, an analyst with Mumbai-based Nirmal Bang Institutional Equities. Banking, financial services and insurance “has become a mature vertical, posting just incremental growth. The IT firms will fill that void with energy utilities, retail and, of course, health care contracts,” he said.

Infosys on Jan. 11 said net income was 23.7 billion rupees ($432 million) in the third quarter, little changed from a year earlier. That surpassed the 22.4 billion-rupee median of 42 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

The company’s shares surged by a record 17 percent on Jan. 11 after it raised its full-year sales forecast. They gained 1.1 percent to 2,797.95.2 rupees in Mumbai after declining 16 percent last year. The benchmark BSE India Sensitive Index rose 26 percent in 2012.

Obama’s Stand

Obama’s stand against outsourcing, promising a ban on tax breaks for American companies that move jobs overseas, may prompt states to find software providers based in the U.S. In 2010, former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland banned state agencies from purchasing outsourced services.

After Governor John Kasich took office in 2011, he continued the policy while allowing for a waiver application if the only way to obtain the services is from outside the U.S., Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said in a telephone interview.

“From a policy standpoint, you want a quality product that’s easy to use,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, a former White House health-care policy adviser and one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act. “An issue as important as health care is no place to get caught up in the politics of outsourcing.”

The president’s rhetoric on outsourcing may not deter companies seeking to tap insurers and states for business that Technology Holdings forecasts will expand 9 percent a year to $15 billion by 2016.

Illinois Exchange

Infosys, started by seven people including Chief Executive Officer S.D. Shibulal with $250 borrowed from their wives in 1981, is vying with Cognizant, Xerox Corp. and two rivals to help the state of Illinois, the country’s fifth-biggest, build an exchange that Governor Pat Quinn predicts will serve 1 million people by 2016, spokesman Mike Claffey said in an e-mail. The marketplace would commence operation in 2015, pending legislative approval, he said.

States will also need help to run and maintain the exchanges, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. The marketplaces may become “self sustaining” only after two to three years, Infosys wrote in a 2010 request for comment from Illinois.

“Health care is absolutely going to be a huge growth area for Indian outsourcers including Infosys,” Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. and Wipro Ltd., said Vivek Subramanyam, managing director of Mumbai-based Technology Holdings, which advises companies on mergers & acquisitions. While Infosys trails behind companies like Cognizant, “the industry is going to have a lot of money to go around in the near future,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kartikay Mehrotra in New Delhi atkmehrotra2@bloomberg.net
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...orporate-india