American citizen fights for right to celebrate holidays (at U.S. workplace)

[Newsjock]

Source: NBC Bay Area

Is it wrong for an American to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas?

Sounds like a crazy question, but it's actually at the center of a lawsuit that's on its way to court.

Promila Awasthi is a US citizen, originally from India. She lives in Silicon Valley, and worked for software giant Infosys at its Fremont, Calif. office in 2008.

When she was there, she claims, she was routinely teased by two of her supervisors for celebrating American holidays. "Why, as an Indian, should you be celebrating Thanksgiving?" she says she was asked. "You should not be doing that," she was told.

Infosys is based in Bangalore, India.

... After nine months at Infosys, Awasthi said the pressure was too much, and she resigned. She's now suing her former employer, alleging both workplace harassment and failure to pay overtime (Awasthi says she's owed more than $21,000 for working late nights and weekends).

Read more: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/tech/Tech-Giant-Heads-to-Court-Over-Holiday-Teasing-78556042.html

[Libertas1776]

1. From the article

When the America economy was going through its recent shudders, causing massive layoffs across the US corporate landscape, Awasthi claims that many at the company celebrated as the economy went south.

"Every time the layoff news comes, they're happy," she says. "They say this is good for us, those jobs will be outsourced."

Hooray for globalization, hooray for free trade :sarcasm: This is America, if the lady and her family wants to celebrate an American holiday, that's there damn right, especially as American citizens.

[LiberalEsto]

2. Failure to pay overtime?

Welcome to America, Promila.

American IT companies do not pay overtime for their computer professionals who work long days and many weekends. My husband has been an IT professional for over 25 years. He would faint if he ever received one penny for all those 60-hour weeks.

Furthermore, these IT workers are told if they don't put in the long hours, they can easily be replaced by cheap foreign IT workers here on H1B visas.