Overtime Pay And Visa Rules Misuse: Lawsuit Against Infosys In US

Indian software giant Infosys faces a lawsuit in US by a former employee who has alleged “no compensation” for overtime work, reports GadgetsNow. This is expected to trigger a probe by the US Department of Labor Investigation.

A Concurrent Version System (CVS) project member, Anuj Kapur, had filed a complaint against Infosys alleging that the company denied his “overtime pay” for almost 1,000 hours in July. Infosys, in August, had replied that he was an hourly worker on an H1-B visa.

This, however is not the first time Infosys is facing issues over payment for overtime. In 2008, the company paid $26 million to the California Division of Labour Standards Enforcement for settling a similar overtime dispute.

The suit filed by Kapur alleges his manager said that overtime workers usually did not get paid and had threatened that they would be sent back to India if they refused to work more than the mandated 40 hours. He also quoted the manager as saying that overtime works will not get billed as Infosys wants to raise its cost competitiveness against a rival by cutting overtime costs.

However, reports suggest that The Wage and Hour Department in the State of Rhode Island had begun an investigation into the allegation that companies like Infosys were misusing the provisions of H1-B by filing visas under the ‘exempt salaried’ category while employing them as non-exempt hourly workers.