Disney is being sued by Leo Perrero and Dena Moore, its two former employees, for conspiring with outsourcing firms to hire cheaper foreign workers over current ones. The lawsuits were filed in the Middle District federal Court in Florida, and it seeks class-action lawsuit for the rest of the 250 other workers that have been laid off last year.
According to The Wrap, Disney World tech is allegedly hiring foreign workers using H-1B visas through the two outsourcing firms, HCL and Cognizant. Both the plaintiffs claim that the conspiracy between the three companies will displace Americans. The plaintiffs' attorney, Sara Blackwell, said the lawsuit aims to stop the outsourcing companies from abusing the immigration system by hitting the at their business model.
"I don't have to be angry or cause drama," said Moore in a report by the United Press International. "But they are just doing things to save a buck, and it's making Americans poor."
Disney reacted to the lawsuit saying, "These lawsuits are based on an unsustainable legal theory and are a wholesale misrepresentation of the facts." It also claimed that it hired back more than 100 of the employees that were laid off.
The New York Times wrote that Perrero, who was training an Indian immigrant to do his job before he was laid off, hoped that he would land in another position in Disney. He also discovered that he and 250 other tech workers that were laid off would not be hired back for at least one year. There is even a high possibility that they will never be hired again.
Last January, a furor on layoffs revealed that there are many other cases in the nation where American tech, accounting, and administration workers have been replaced by foreigners with H-1B visas. The Labor Department has started to officially investigate these outsourcing companies. There are some 30 other ex-Disney workers who have filed complaints at the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
