The U.S. Department of Labor is not happy with one New
Jersey-based software company using H-1B visas.
Peri Software Solutions, which has offices in Los Angeles and San Jose, Calif., and offshore in Chennai,
India, is accused of
violating prevailing wage law for a large contingent of H-1B visa employees.
According to a Department of Labor statement, Peri Software and its president
and owner, Sarib Perisamya, have been cited for not paying prevailing wages of
H-1B visa holders working in software and technology analyst positions.
The U.S. government is going
after $1,456,422 in back wages owed to 163 workers.
"The actions of Peri Software Solutions demonstrate the kind of abuses
that our laws are designed to prevent," said Secretary of Labor Hilda
Solis in a DoL statement.
"Every worker deserves to be paid for his or her work, and the Labor
Department is committed to holding those companies that violate our nation's
labor laws accountable."
The Department of Labor is also suing Peri Software for $439,000 due to the
"willful nature" of the offenses, including "that the company
forced employees to sign employment contracts and then sued them when those
contracts were broken," said the DoL statement. Peri Software will likely
face being debarred from utilizing the H-1B visa program from the Department of
Homeland Security. According to Computerworld's Patrick Thibodeau, Peri
Software is seeking to stop
the two-year debarment from the H-1B program:
"Peri officials are not commenting on the action, but Labor Department
spokeswoman Leni Fortson said the company is seeking an administrative hearing
to challenge the finding. 'Everything is contingent upon the outcome of the
administrative hearing,' she said."
The H-1B visa program has come under fire in the past year from
prominent U.S. senators for
undermining qualified American workers. More recently, the Economic Policy
Institute has
refuted the claims of company executives like former HP CEO Carly Fiorina and
Microsoft's Bill Gates, who "cry wolf" about needing the best and
brightest workers from abroad and support H-1B workers, but that the real use
of H-1B workers is for temporary work only.
"[Some companies are] using the H-1B and L-1 visa programs
for purely temporary purposes, and their share of the H-1B and L-1 visa numbers
is large and increasing," writes report-author professor Ron Hira in his
analysis for the Economic Policy Institute. "This paper [shows] that
growing shares of employers never plan to sponsor H-1B and L-1 visas for
permanent residence."
The H-1B visa program, as stated by the Department of Labor, is
intended to be a temporary program. From the DoL statement on the Peri Software
case:
"The H-1B visa program permits employers to temporarily hire
foreign workers in professional occupations such as computer programmers,
engineers, physicians and teachers. H-1B workers must be paid the same wage
rates paid to U.S. workers who perform
the same types of work or the prevailing wage rate in the areas of intended
employment, whichever is higher."
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