Concerned about troubling employment trends in tech industry, US Senate tells TCS

Bengaluru: US senators have questioned India's largest IT services firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on layoffs, including American staff, and asked whether the company has displaced any American employees with H-1B employees?

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E Grassley and other members have written a letter to 10 major companies including TCS (it is the only Indian company) and others (Amazon, Apple and Deloitte, among others), on issues related to H-1B visas.

"We are concerned about some troubling employment trends in the tech industry... In evaluating the high unemployment rate for American tech workers, we cannot ignore the massive, ongoing layoffs ordered by you and your peers in C-suites over the past few years," the letter stated.

Addressing TCS CEO Krithivasan, US senators said that TCS has been laying off American employees and also has been filing H-1B visa petitions for thousands of foreign workers.

In fiscal year 2025, the IT firm received approval to hire 5,505 H-1B employees, making it the second largest employer of newly approved H-1B beneficiaries in the US. At the same time, it has laid off over 12,000 employees worldwide, including American staff.

"TCS laid off nearly five dozen employees in its Jacksonville office alone last month (August)," the letter stated.

"TCS is already under investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for allegedly firing older American workers in favour of newly hired South-Asian H-1B employees. TCS is doing itself no favours by replacing Americans with H-1Bs while this investigation is ongoing," it further added.

It asked the company to provide answers to the questions including H-1B hires’ salary and benefits package and whether they are similar as that of American workers with the same qualifications and whether the company outsources any hiring to contractors or staffing firms that place H-1B workers within the organisation?

US Senators have asked the company to provide answers with accompanying data by October 10, 2025.

Meanwhile, the IT-union body Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) has demanded that the Indian government should immediately initiate a similar probe into "mass terminations, unfair practices, and systemic discrimination by TCS in India."

Harpreet Singh Saluja, President, NITES, said that the union has submitted a formal complaint with the Chief Minister of Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis and the Labour Ministry of Maharashtra regarding mass terminations being carried out by TCS. He claimed that in Pune alone around 2,500 employees have been forced to resign under pressure without following the mandatory provisions of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 — no notice, no compensation, and no government intimation.

On Thursday, some reports claimed that TCS is offering severance packages of up to two years to some of its laid off employees.

When asked about it, the company in a statement said, “In keeping with the values of our company, those affected by our recent initiative to realign skills have been provided care and support as is due to them in each of the individual circumstances.”