Jill Prejean, a former Vice President (VP) of talent acquisition at the US division of Bengaluru-headquartered IT company Infosys, claims she was told not to hire women with children, individuals over the age of 50, or people of Indian descent.
In September 2021, Prejean launched a lawsuit against the IT firm Infosys. A United States District Court for the Southern District of New York denied the company’s request to dismiss the former executive’s case alleging discriminatory hiring practices.
The defendants have been given 21 days from September 30 to file an answer. Prejean sued former senior VP and head of consultancy Mark Livingston, as well as former partners Dan Albright and Jerry Kurtz. She had approached the court against Infosys for retaliatory discharge and a hostile work environment.
According to Prejean’s statement, she was “struck to discover a prevalent culture of illegal discriminatory animus among the partner level executives based on age, gender, and caregiver position.”
This is not the first time Infosys has been accused of prejudice in the hiring process. Previously, four female employees filed a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2021, stating that the company favored Indian and male staff.
Prejean was 59 years old when she was hired by Infosys in 2018. According to multiple reports, 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.”
Infosys has been paying out massive dividends to its shareholders, and its first interim dividend for fiscal year FY23 is anticipated to be issued next week. In addition, the IT behemoth will reveal its September 2022 quarterly earnings. Infosys paid a massive 620% dividend to stockholders in FY22 alone.
In a regulatory filing last month, Infosys stated, “The financial results and proposal for interim dividend, if any, would be presented to the Board of Directors for their approval on October 13, 2022.”
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