Wipro faces class action law suit in the U.S.

An Indian national employee who has worked with India’s third largest IT company Wipro has filed a class action law suit on March 30 with the Superior Court of California for allegedly not paying him and other employees for working overtime.

In his complaint, Suri Payala, has alleged that he was not paid overtime and was not paid for his travel time to the outsourced job site. “For the first six months of 2014, Mr. Payala was employed by Wipro with the title of ‘Architect’ and was outsourced to DirecTV in California and was paid less than $7000 per month as salary,” he said.

According to the Department of Industrial relations, State of California: “Any work in excess of eight hours in one day and in excess of 40 hours in one week and the first eight hours worked on the seventh day of work in one week shall be compensated at the rate of no less than one and half times the regular rate of pay for an employee. Any work in excess of 12 hours in one day shall be compensated at the rate of no less than twice the regular rate for an employee.”

When contacted, the company in an email statement said, “Wipro abides by the laws of every jurisdiction where we do business. While we do not comment on pending litigation, suffice to say Wipro will vigorously defend these allegations.”

A class action suit is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member of that group for a common cause.

Based on the reports of employee filing suit in the U.S., BSE has sought clarification from Wipro for which the company has not yet responded till Friday evening.