A UK division of the Indian conglomerate Tata “deliberately orchestrated” a redundancy programme in a way that unfairly targeted older, non-Indian nationals, an employment tribunal has heard.
Three claimants allege the Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which is valued at almost £110bn on the BSE stock exchange in Mumbai, discriminated against them on grounds of age and nationality during a restructuring that began in mid-2023.
The case mirrors a similar claim brought in the US, where at least 22 workers have alleged that TCS sacked them at short notice and replaced many of them with workers from India on H1-B visas, used for hiring staff with specialist skills.
TCS denies both claims. It is part of the Tata group of companies, which includes Tetley Tea and Jaguar Land Rover.
Steve Beer, the lead claimant in London, told the employment tribunal that he had been made redundant in an “unfair and discriminatory manner” by TCS, an IT outsourcing business whose clients included Virgin Atlantic, the Danish shipping company Maersk and the insurer Aviva.
Beer, a former partner hired by TCS in February 2019, claims that the company “targeted for redundancy an age mature, predominantly non-Indian national group of employees” who worked in the consulting services and integration (CS&I) division.
He said TCS “deliberately orchestrated” its redundancy process to ensure these employees were singled out for redundancy, while younger, Indian nationals were spared.
He said this was achieved via a “tickbox” consultancy process whose outcome had already been decided.
In his claim, Beer said TCS had deployed a “bait-and-switch” practice to attract potential clients around the world, incorporating “local” staff into its sales proposals, before substituting them with Indian staff once the contract was secured.
This was done, he claimed, because non-Indian staff, including many who worked in CS&I, were perceived internally as “more costly and less culturally ‘malleable and compliant’”.
This, he said, meant that keeping those staff on the contracts could lower TCS’s profit margins and affect performance metrics that influenced bonuses.
He said TCS sometimes understated its likely costs in order to win contracts, which made it even more likely that more “seasoned” but more expensive CS&I staff would be replaced on the contracts.
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This, he said, meant that those staff were no longer working on projects that could be billed to clients, a crucial determinant of who was targeted for redundancy.
In his evidence, Beer referred to an email sent in August 2023 by a human resources director, which he claimed said employees who were not working on “billable” projects were at risk.
In a response submitted to the court, TCS denied all of Beer’s claims.
Two other claimants, who also alleged discrimination on grounds of age and nationality, have yet to give evidence.
Source: www.theguardian.com