Employee files class action suite against Tata America..

A news item appeared in Economic Times dated 15th Feb'06..

A Nationwide Class Action Lawsuit has been filed against Tata America International Corporation in the US by tge law firm of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP against the company practice of forcing workers to hand over federal and state tax refunds, reports Business Wire India. Tata America is a subsidiary of the Tata group.

Gopi Vedachalam, a Tata America employee, on Tuesday filed a nationwide class action lawsuit in the District Court in San Francisco against Tata America International Corporation, and its parent Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, as well as Tata Sons, Ltd.

The suit also charges that the Tata company has unjustly enriched itself by requiring all of its non-US-citizen employees to endorse and sign over their federal and state tax refund checks to Tata. The proposed class action suit consists of thousands of current non-US citizen employees of Tata working in the United States, plus former Tata employees dating back to 2000.

The complaint charges that most Tata employees in the United States are non-US citizens who work on visas. Tata requires each employee to sign an agreement which states that the employee's gross amount of compensation will be includable as earnings in the United States and reported to the US Internal Revenue Service.

The complaint alleges that these employees are not paid the amount promised them in these agreements. It further alleges that, at least until July 2005, Tata required its non-US-citizen employees to sign power of attorney agreements delegating an outside agency to calculate and submit each employee's tax return to state and federal authorities. Tata then required its non-US-citizen employees who received tax refunds from state and federal tax authorities to endorse the tax refund checks and send them back to Tata.

Under California Labor Code Section 221, it is unlawful "for any employer to collect or receive from an employee any part of wages theretofore paid by said employer to said employee." The complaint also charges that Tata's conduct violates this Code section as well as the common law forbidding unjust enrichment and conversion.

From 2000 to 2003, plaintiff Gopi Vedachalam worked in Hayward, California, as a Tata project manager assigned to Target. Since 2003, he has worked as a Tata project manager for 21st Century Insurance in Woodland Hills, California. "I work hard for Tata and the companies I have been assigned to. I should receive the full wages Tata agreed to pay me, as should all other Tata employees in America. I did not hand over my tax refund checks voluntarily. I tried to recover these wages through Tata's internal procedures, but I was met with either silence or refusal."

Vedachalam wants the US federal court to certify the case as a class action and issue an injunction against Tata, preventing it from requiring its employees to endorse their tax refund checks to the company to the extent it is still doing so. The complaint also seeks compensation and damages for current and former employees who were not paid what they were promised and who were deprived of their tax refunds.