The has filed a lawsuit against Cloudera, accusing the company of unfairly preventing American workers from accessing high-paying tech jobs. Officials allege that Cloudera favoured hiring individuals on temporary visas rather than giving proper consideration to qualified U.S. applicants.
The case was announced Tuesday by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and targets Inc., a tech company headquartered in Santa Clara, California.
See the post here:
“We just sued Cloudera for discriminating against U.S. workers in favor of foreign visa holders for high-paying tech jobs. This is a violation of the Immigration & Nationality Act, & @CivilRights will not hesitate to sue employers for discriminating against U.S. workers! You are on notice!” wrote Harmeet Dhillon in a post on X.
According to the DOJ, the company violated the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), a law that prohibits certain forms of employment discrimination. The complaint was submitted to the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer, which oversees cases involving the INA.
Here’s what the complaint alleges
The lawsuit alleges that Cloudera set up a separate hiring and recruitment process for certain high-paying roles. Officials say this system was intended to discourage U.S. workers from applying.
It was also alleged that Cloudera did not consider them, for lucrative technology jobs that the company earmarked for people with temporary employment visas. Cloudera created an email account that did not allow external emails, but still instructed applicants to use that unworkable email address to apply for jobs, the official release stated.
The Division received a charge of employment discrimination from one U.S. worker who tried to apply using the email account Cloudera set up, but received a bounce back notification. When sponsoring current employees under the permanent labor certification program (PERM), Cloudera purposely failed to recruit U.S. workers in good faith, the release further added.
Dhillon warned employers, saying, “ cannot use the PERM sponsorship process as a backdoor for discriminating against US workers,” Dhillon said. “The Division will not hesitate to sue companies who intentionally deter US workers from applying to American jobs.”
- The DOJ’s lawsuit highlights the ongoing issue of employment discrimination against U.S. workers.
- Companies must adhere to fair hiring practices and cannot favor foreign workers over qualified American applicants.
- The Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative aims to hold companies accountable for unlawful hiring practices.
