Back in January, former IT workers at Disney filed a lawsuit against the company and two outsourcing contractors, alleging “that the Disney employees were the victim of a racketeering scheme to terminate them and replace them with immigrant, outsourced workers through the federal H-1B Visa program.” The 250 laid-off workers were also made to train their replacements.
The lawsuits were dismissed last week by U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell. His ruling stated that “the former Disney employees, Leo Perrero and Dena Moore, were off-base in their accusations that Disney and outsourcing firms HCL Inc. and Cognizant Technologies made false statements on certifications for the Visa program.”
With the H-1B Visa program, employers are required to say if current employees would be “adversely affected” by any foreign workers hired through the program. The plaintiffs said they were in fact adversely affected by training their replacements, who were coming in for less pay.
The court ruled that HCL did state that none of its own employees would be adversely affected. The judge said that HCL’s claims were not false.
Sara Blackwell, Perrero and Moore’s attorney, said the case’s dismissal “demonstrates the need for legal protection of American workers and American data. The United States government has created immigration and other laws that have allowed American companies to fire Americans, bring foreigners in this nation to take American jobs, ship American jobs and to also send America’s private banking and medical data overseas.”
100 of the laid-off IT workers have been hired back into other roles in the company. Moore was also offered another role at comparable pay to her previous position.
Two dozen of the laid-off workers have filed complaints with the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission.
News source: Orlando Sentinel
