CT Techworker Coalition

In the dump of documents received from our latest Freedom of Information request, CTTechworkers learned that Infosys is doing everything they can to re-write the terms of the deal that would have the state give the company $18 million.

As recently reported, the India-based IT outsourcing blamed Covid 19 for missing hiring targets in the original agreement struck with Governor Ned Lamont. This, despite the fact that the company routinely fired American programmers during this time period.

But ever since the Covid 19 lockdowns, Infosys execs have sought to change language in their contract that would make it easier for them get their taxpayer-funded grant money.

The FOI papers show that on Friday, July 16, Don Lapointe, an accountant with the CT Department of Economic and Community Development, denied their request for a $4 MILLION payment. In an email to Omowole Omosehinmi, an Infosys attorney, Lapointe wrote:

” … you had the jobs as of 12/31/2019 but you were not able to retain them in 2020, therefore not satisifying section 1.1(b) of the requirement and therefore not eligible for the grant,” Lapointe wrote. ” … the Company is not eligible for the next round of funding until your Company has reached the 981 full time employees and
maintain 981 for twenty four consecutive months.”

This latest dump of documents from this FOI request does not contain any definitive information about a new final agreement between the state and Infosys. But there was much haggling between the two sides.

The latest contract proposed by Infosys appears to be the following:

Getting information on this deal has been a long hard slog. All e-mails and phone calls sent to Govenor Lamont’s office and/or the Department of Economic and Community Development are not returned.

We, at CT Techworkers, find this troubling. This involves $18 MILLION in taxpayer funds and we should have a right to know what is happening with our money – and whether the state has bent over backwards for this supra-national company.

Having said all of that, it was heartening to see Mr. Lapointe hold the line during negotiations with Infosys. But we expect a whole lot more from the Lamont administration, who trumpted this deal on the campaign trail as proof that he is an astute businessman.

We have filed another FOI request but, since the last took 6 months to fulfill, we are not hopeful that new information will arrive anytime in the next few months. But we are working on other angles. Stay tuned to this space for updates!

The founder of US Techworkers, Kevin Lynn, is well known to us. He was one of our earliest supporters and his group has provided guidance to displaced Connecticut IT workers ever since our January 2019 rally in Hartford.

On a national level, US Techworkers has provided boots-on-the-ground lobbying in DC that, over and over again, defeated legislation that would have put even more of us out of work.

He’s been THAT GUY who has been taking the fight to the globalists, who won’t rest until we all lose our jobs

But, in his most-recent Founder’s Corner missive, Kevin says the days of us cowering in our cubicles is over and he urges us all to join him in harnessing the fighting spirit that lives within all of us.

It’s, perhaps, his best written material produced to date.

The most inspirational part of this article came when he pointed to the life examples offered by Bob Heath, a Florida IT industry veteran that recently passed away. Heath led a one-man war against anyone and everyone who would seek to drive Americans out of our profession. Even as cancer was about to take his life, Bob was looking for his laptop, so he could file yet another Department of Labor complaint against corporations who discriminate against Americans.

Bob didn’t have a lawyer and, after going through bouts of unemployment, his funds were limited. But he still found a way to fire off these complaints and he won settlement after settlement after settlement. He was a nightmare for corporate HR departments and that person who made companies know they’re being watched.

Many of us live a life of quiet desperation. We see our companies hiring foreign Visa workers. We are asked to train them in our jobs. We know what comes next.

The days of sitting back and letting things happen to us is over! We need to take the fight to the people doing this to us. No one is going to do this for us.

After all, it doesn’t take much. Just observe and have the guts to reach out to fellow employees.

Attorney and tech worker John Miano offers this advice:

When managers make verbal statements, write down what you heard, what you were supposed to do, and what your reaction to the statements was. Include the date. You want to have as much information as possible about context to help make the statements admissible as evidence. If it is legal in your state, record the conversations.

Recording the reaction to what your employer said is just as important as recording what was said. You need to overcome the problem of hearsay. Hearsay is an out of court statement made to prove the truth of the matter asserted in the statement. However, there are many ways to get around the hearsay problem.

Example. On August 8th, an HR manager, Mr. Green said in a meeting, “You Americans are just lazy.

Imagine you are on the witness stand.

If nothing else, join our SWAT team, a phone bank of IT pros who call our representatives in DC before big votes.

But most importantly, let’s all stand up and adopt the fighting spirit – just like Bob Heath!

If we do nothing, what will be left for our children?

We have a new favorite Journalist – and we were really surprised to find her writing for Newsweek (as mainstream as Mainstream Media gets).

In her July article, Pamela Denise Long took aim at the current “immigration industrial complex” and showed how its not only leaving behind African-Americans but ALL Americans.

“Are descendants of U.S. slaves not supposed to notice how we and our countrymen are negatively affected by yet another bastardization of “social justice?” By supporting brain drain policies, Democrats, and officials who are Republican in name only are traitors against the American people,” she wrote. “We see you!”

Wow!!

We haven’t seen the truth laid out in such bold and stark terms since … well … I don’t know when. I wonder how she got this approved by the Editorial Board, never mind the Publisher.

Ms. Long says it’s an “open secret” how corporations engage in bogus job searches to find US applicants for their openings – but they are really “designed to fail” and just a head fake on their way to finding cheaper Visa workers.

If this trend of hiring foreign workers over Americans continues, Ms. Long said this will have real and lasting impacts on opportunity for generations of Americans.

“America does not have unlimited resources nor spontaneously regenerating infrastructure, and Americans are already left out of our nation’s innovations job market.” she wrote. “Why don’t our dreams matter?”

She fears for the future, as our elected leaders in DC continue to author legislation that perpetuates this trend. In fact, as the economy starts to slow, companies are increasingly look for lower-cost employees.

“Legislators are waging an immigration charm offensive that will end in chaos for the descendants of slaves, working class Americans and U.S.-born STEM professionals. I’m deeply concerned that, for fear of being called xenophobic, my fellow Americans will remain silent until the damage is obvious but irreparable.”

What’s she is saying is true! There are so many IT professionals across Connecticut who are afraid to speak up. They are afraid of being labeled a racist. This has got to end!

We thanks Pamela Denise Long for taking a lead in this fight and we will be following her work.

India-based global outsourcing firm Infosys is openly disregarding President Joe Biden’s call to sanction Russia for the invasion of Ukraine.

While most other outsourcing firms (PwC, KPMG, Accenture and DXC) are joining in with US sanctions against Russia and closing up their offices, it’s business as usual at the Infosys Moscow offices. There are no plans to halt operations.

The company made a laughable attempt to deflect attention on themselves yesterday, by minimizing the size of their operations and mentioning that they gave $1 million to funds supporting Ukranian victims. But with all the death and destruction taking place in Ukraine, it’s hard not to see the company as anything but an enemy of the Ukrainian people – and an enemy of the United States.

The issue came to light earlier this week, when the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak was accused in the British media of profiting from Putin’s regime over the Russian operations of Infosys, in which his wife holds a 0.91% stake. Earlier in the month, Sunak urged British companies to pull out of Russia.

Infosys has been very successful in securing tens of millions of dollars in grants from states across the US, including Connecticut. The state’s Governor, Ned Lamont, has developed a deep friendship with Infosys President Ravi Kumar.

Despite the fact that Infosys has not lived up to the terms of the $18 million grants deal, Governor Lamont has not tried to cancel it.

Lamont has condemned the invasion of Ukraine and claims to “stand in solidarity” with the people of the Ukraine.

We tried to reach Governor Lamont by phone yesterday to see whether he’s had any second thoughts on Infosys- especially since the company has decided to stick with Russia – but no calls were returned.

Infosys’s decision to ignore US sanctions is just the latest example of Indian leaders snubbing the US. Last week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s struck a new trade deal with Vladimir Putin that would open new trade between the two countries.

President Biden has yet to level any retaliatory sanctions against India but has threatened countries, like China, with devastating consequences if they aid Russia in any way. Meanwhile, UK leaders are considering their own actions against India.

India is locking in a deal with Russia that will enable the nation to purchase commodities (e.g., oil, gas) using Rupees and Rubles.

The deal is in direct defiance of US sanctions against Vladimir Putin, as it requires all US allies work together to economically isolate Russia in the wake of their invasion of Ukraine.

The deal also strikes to the very heart of the Petro-Dollar system, in place since the 1970s, which stipulates that all trade in oil and gas be made in US dollars. This system has boosted the value of the dollar since all countries must acquire it to make purchases for necessary commodities.

Biden has yet to level any retaliatory sanctions against India but has threatened countries, like China, with devastating consequences if they aid Russia in any way.

As news of the trade deal broke, the US Senate – led by President Biden’s Democrats – endorsed changes to the so-called “COMPETES” Act, which would undoubtedly reward India with even more work Visas. In fact, the bill invents a brand new class of Visas (i.e., W), a new addition to a veritable Alphabet soup of current Visa programs.

The move left some long-time observers of immigration legislation shaking their heads. “It’s yet another case of our country shooting ourselves in the foot – at a time when we desperately need to act in our own self interest,” said one deflated activist. “The sad thing is that this will end up hurting minorities in this country, more than anyone else.”

Indra Nooyi, the former Pepsi CEO who helped bring Infosys to Hartford, praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a great leader – even after he led military expeditions into the Ukraine.

The news broke in a recent New York Post article, where a former colleague described how Nooyi gushed about Putin in 2014, just months after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region. She made the statements at a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland of 16 top US, Western European, Russian and Ukrainian business leaders, arranged by Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum.

While leaders were discussing how the world should respond to Russia’s aggression, Nooyi declared to colleagues – including some from the Ukraine – that Putin was an “extraordinary leader.”

“I was shocked, disgusted and surprised,” the colleague said.

CT Techworkers reached out to Nooyi’s PR team to see if she is still a Putin devotee, even after his latest foray into Ukraine. His forces have been accused of war crimes, including the deaths of at least 540 innocent civilians, a hospital bombing as well as the use of cluster bombs and thermobaric weapons.

Nooyi has been praised as a groundbreaking CEO when she served at PepsiCo, earning millions leading the global beverage giant. Her globalist approach to hiring and sourcing materials earned her a spot on the Board of Trustees at the World Economic Forum, alongside Klaus Schwab.

Her tenure, however, was scarred by her practice of replacing American workers with foreign Visa workers.

Nooyi has a long history with Governor Ned Lamont. They were classmates at Yale and are neighbors in an exclusive neighborhood in Greenwich. She helped arrange the meeting between Governor Ned Lamont and Infosys CEO Ravi Kumar, which led to the creation of the Infosys Hartford office – as well the $18 million in grants the state Department of Economic and Community Development offered the company.

In 2019, Lamont tapped Nooyi to lead the Connecticut Economic Resource Center, a public-private partnership whose mission is to promote economic development.

Governor Lamont is fighting off an investigation into one of his wife’s companies, who received millions in no-bid Covid-testing contracts. Annie Lamont is a frequent attendee of World Economic Forum meetings and is a thought leader in the world of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing.

Just three years after Governor Ned Lamont agreed to pay Infosys $18 million in exchange for the global IT firm to hire 1,000 IT workers at their Hartford office, the company recently notified state leaders that is has fallen short on its part of the deal.

According to documents obtained by CT Techworkers, Infosys notified state leaders in 2020 that they were not going to meet their hiring quotas, as promised in their contract with the state, and sought an extension on the terms of the agreement.

Apparently, the company met the first part of the contract (i.e., hiring 200 workers by December 31, 2019) and was, presumably, rewarded with $4 million, But the company blamed Covid 19 for not being able to meet the next goal (i.e., hiring an additional 300 workers by December 2022).

As a result of this, the company has proposed that the deadlines in their deal be extended by two years. So, for example, the company is seeking to have 2020 deadlines be pushed back to the end of 2022.

This letter to state leaders was obtained as part of a Freedom of Information (FOI) request made by CT Techworkers during the Summer of 2021. The documents returned as part of this request did not include any email responses to the Infosys proposal. Not one of the calls made to the Governor’s office – or to the Department of Economic and Community Development – have been returned, so no more information is available at press time.

The request to extend the deadlines is somewhat curious. While it’s true that businesses across the country have had trouble finding workers. in the last 18 months or so, it hasn’t been the case in Connecticut.

Besides, the company has boasted about a talent pipeline they created with nearby Trinity College. A training program created there, in conjunction with Infosys, has had at least several hundred participants since its inception in 2019 and even a fraction of these students could have easily gotten the company to 300 employees. Why wouldn’t those students want to join a company that claims to be on the forefront of IT innovation?

But even if none of the students in that program chose to work for Infosys, Connecticut colleges and universities graduate 42,680 students every year. Surely some of these graduates would provide promising recruits.

And, if the company is not receiving enough contracts to justify hiring new employees, are they really the innovative company they say they are.

The Global IT firm has been rocked in recent years with fines for violating US Visa laws. The company’s workforce is almost entirely citizens of South Asian countries.

The company’s most-recent experiment with hiring US workers has been a disaster, according to testimonies left on the site glassdoor. Many current and former workers at their Hartford location say that workplace is a corporate nightmare, where the careers of hopeful employees are either left to languish – or are extinguished altogether if they don’t successfully navigate the company’s pedantic and petty corporate culture.

The state has never released any numbers on how many employees have been hired at the Infosys Hartford office – or how much taxpayer money has been paid to the firm (besides a $2 million training grant the state paid the company in 2019).

CT Techworkers submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, asking for all paperwork and e-mails relating to the state’s $18M deal with Infosys.

The request was just recently complied with and we just started sifting through the mountain of paperwork – but one of our long-standing questions was finally answered.

All along, we’ve been asking the Lamont Administration and Infosys to answer a simple question: Will the state require that American citizens be hired at the Infosys Hartford office, as part of this taxpayer-funded deal? The answer is NO!

Look at this email exchange between an Infosys rep and a state-hired attorney on this case:

Finally, we get the truth. Under the deal, workers at Infosys in Hartford can be permanent residents (i.e., have a green card [a citizenship status that bestows all the rights of a US citizen except the right to vote]).

Foreign workers can be granted a green card in one of two ways:

1. The EB-5 program enables wealthy foreigners to “purchase” a green card after investing at least $500,000 in an American business that creates 10 jobs or more.
2. Most foreign workers acquire a green card via a sponsorship from their employer. In the IT industry, this happens after years of working long hours as an L-1 or H-1B Visa holder. Acquiring a green card is the gold standard among foreign workers – but so few are ever awarded it.

Their answer doesn’t surprise us. We actually kind of expected it. When we posed this question at our rally in Hartford in January of 2019, they danced around the issue.

In response to our rally, Governor Lamont issued this statement:

“Governor Lamont looks forward to Infosys becoming a key economic player in our state. These will be full-time jobs for individuals, many of whom live, work and play in our communities across the state.”

Also responding to our rally, Jeff Auker, an Infosys exec, first appeared to refute our claims – and promised that ALL workers at Infosys in Hartford would be American (see the first 25 seconds of this video). But later, in that same interview, he seemed to backpedal on that by saying workers there will be “Visa-independent.”

We understand that politicians and business leaders have to “fudge” their words – especially if they might make them look bad to some portion of the public. But, in this case, they seem to be following a disturbing new trend of trivializing American citizenship, a legal status many of our ancestors sacrificed their lives for. The words they use attempt to bend the definition of what an American is and are the same words used by globalists, who have shipped so many of our jobs overseas and have encouraged limitless immigration (which has displaced so many minority American workers).

It’s been a while since I looked at the interview with Mr. Auker. He comes off as such a sad and tired shell of a human being and I can’t help but feel sorry for him. It must be hell working for a company that abuses their workers and has been fined millions by the federal government for skirting US Visa laws. When he was a little boy, did he want to grow up and help an organization facilitate an international labor racket that has been compared to slavery? I wonder if his Mom is proud of him?

We’ve reached out to the Lamont administration to get a breakdown of how many of the Infosys hires are green card holders – but our calls were not returned.

The fact that Infosys hires mostly foreign-born workers in the US is certainly not shocking. But the fact that politicians continue to return to this tried-and-failed approach to economic development is truly astounding. It simply benefits no one – except the people who traffic in supply the foreign workers and the lawyers that facilitate their Visas. Plus, it has added drawbacks of either displacing American workers – or letting them languish as part of some head fake on a workforce development scam.

It’s been a few years since Infosys opened their office in Hartford and reviews submitted by current and former employees don’t paint a pretty picture about what goes on there.

Far from the hub of innovation that state leaders hoped for, the employee reviews submitted to glassdoor.com show that it’s become a place where employees sit around waiting for meaningful work assignments and, along the way, are subjected to abusive corporate managers who appear to conspire to chase Americans out of the company.

“These people will find any and everything to try and lay you off over without providing actual help to let you grow or learn within the company, ” one reviewer said. “They only care about the Indians. If you’re a different race, they’ll file shady ways to get rid of you.”

For our readers convenience, we’ve compiled the reviews in a PDF document here. Please take time to read this – especially if you are considering working there – as the reviews show that it has proved to be a career “dead end” for most who have dared to work for the company.

Infosys bragged in 2018 about how the new facility would help “develop talent organically” in CT. But all it appears to have bred is ill will with workers who have thrown their lot in with the company.

Here are some of the most brutal assessments of the Infosys Hartford office …

The only positive comments appear to be centered around the training offered by the company – whose bill is being footed by the state grant to the company – but this training rarely translates to actual client work much less any world-class innovation that the Infosys managers promised.

In fact, it appears newly trained workers are left to themselves to navigate the company’s management landscape to find work – or they could soon find themselves without a paycheck.

“Managers are horrible,” one former employee wrote. “You have to find your own assignments or they will fire you.”

And even if you are lucky enough to score actual work, managers can make life difficult …

These posts on glassdoor are supported by statements made in this story published by The Verge. The article shows how new hires have to deal with long bouts of doing nothing, spiked with intermittent acts of obligatory communications with company managers.

All of these testimonies certainly don’t paint a picture of innovation, like Infosys would have you believe. And it certainly doesn’t show how the company is helping Americans develop their potential as coders or IT workers, as promised in the $18 million deal Governor Lamont struck.

If any former (or current) employees of Infosys want to reach out to us directly, send us an email at cttechworkers@protonmail.com

When purchasing gifts for your loved ones this Holiday season, remember to buy American!

Buying from American producers and manufacturers supports families and communities right here in American soil. Spending money on products mace in China supports the leadership of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), a group that does things like enslave thousands of Muslim ethnic minorities.

There are plenty of American manufacturers that supply products that you will most likely purchase. For ideas, visit sites like this, this and this.

I recently was looking to buy a new pair of jeans – but didn’t want to buy Levi’s or other brands, because they have longed shipped manufacturing of their products overseas. The All American Clothing company has a wide range of quality jeans on sale for prices at or below what is offered by the foreign-made brands!