Indian software firm settles wages suit with $30m pay-out

Tata subsidiary TCS has not officially confirmed the exact payment Mumbai – Arabstoday India's biggest software outsourcer TCS has agreed to pay $30m to settle a lawsuit filed by two former employees in the US relating to unpaid wages, AFP reported on Wednesday .The suit, filed in 2006 by former TCS staffers Gopi Vedachalam and Kangana Beri, alleged that the company did not pay them the salaries they were promised before arriving in the US, the Economic Times reported.
The workers also claimed TCS violated the rights of its non-US citizen workers in the United States.
TCS declined to comment on the amount they would pay to the claimants, but said that it had agreed to settle the lawsuit "to eliminate any on-going distraction to its (the company's) associates and management.”
"TCS believes that it always acted appropriately notwithstanding the allegations in this case. The company has admitted no wrongdoing and none has been found by the court," the company said in a statement emailed to AFP.
The details of the court order and settlement of the suit were not immediately available.
TCS, part of the sprawling salt-to-steel Tata Group, earns a majority of its revenues from the United States and Europe.
Lawyers in the case said there are 12,800 past and present Tata employees who are potential beneficiaries of the precedent set by the settlement.
In 2011, rival Infosys also faced investigations and lawsuits in the US over allegations it violated work visa laws to send staff for short-term projects.
Indian IT firms fly thousands of employees each year to the US and elsewhere to work at their clients' locations as on-site technicians and engineers.