A former vice president of talent acquisition at Infosys, Jill Prejean, testified in a US court that the Bengaluru-based IT company asked her to avoid hiring people of Indian origin, women with young children at home, and applicants who were 50 years of age or older.
The Indian IT company is being accused of discrimination in hiring procedures in the US for the second time.
The lawsuit filed by Prejean alleging retaliatory termination and a hostile work environment was denied on Friday by the Southern District of New York's United States District Court, despite Infosys' request to have it dismissed. The defendants in Prejean's lawsuit are Infosys, Mark Livingston, a former senior vice president and director of consulting, and Dan Albright and Jerry Kurtz, former business partners.
The former Infosys V-P claimed in her lawsuit that she was fired unfairly because she objected to Kurtz and Albright's illegal demands for the company's senior executive hiring. She also claimed that they "turned hostile" toward her after she objected to their demands.
In order to locate "hard-to-find executives" to work as partners or vice presidents in the company's consulting division, the plaintiff was hired. She was hired for the position in 2018 at the age of 59.
According to her complaint, “she was shocked to find a rampant culture of illegal discriminatory animus among the partner level executives based on age, gender and caregiver status.”
The complaint further mentions that Prejean “tried to change this culture within the first two months of her employment” but was met with “resistance from Infosys partners - Jerry Kurtz and Dan Albright - who became hostile in the face of her objections and tried to circumvent her authority to evade compliance with the law”, according to the ET report.
The complaint also claims that Prejean's job was lost as a result of the biases, which were against New York City human rights laws.
According to the reports, the court also ordered the defendants to respond to the accusations within 21 days of the order date on September 30.
According to Infosys and the accused executives, the lawsuit should be dismissed because the complainant failed to highlight particular comments as evidence.
