Dozens Of UCSF Tech Jobs Being Outsourced To India
SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) -- As of February 2017, 49 tech positions within UCSF will be outsourced to India.
A group of recently fired employees gathered outside the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Tuesday to protest their jobs being sent offshore.
HCL Technologies is based in India and its employees will replace 49 workers with decades of experience.
"It's probably discriminatory, they're replacing us with a primarily young, all-Indian population," Audrey Hatten-Milholin said at the protest. She's been working at UCSF for 17 years. She's also one of the employees being asked to train her replacement.
"You don't want to take it out on them, they're just here doing their job but at the same time you're frustrated that you're teaching someone to take over your job," she said.
"They're treating their employees improperly, unfairly, illegally, and it's bad public policy," Gary Gwilliam said. He's representing Hatten-Milholin and nine other recently fired employees in a discrimination suit against the university.
UCSF says these layoffs will save $30 million over the next five years.
In response to the threat of legal action it released this statement:
"UCSF is still reviewing the DFEH complaint, but we have already noted that there are a number of misstatements of fact. UCSF has followed all applicable laws and UC policy, UCSF has no plans to use the H-1B visa program to bring in foreign IT professionals, and UCSF is working with other campuses across the UC system to identify alternative IT positions for the affected employees within the system."
The workers being let go are concerned that if UCSF gets away with this,"the floodgates will open," Hatten-Milholin said. She worries hiring offshore workers and firing long standing IT employees will become the blueprint for cost-cutting at public universities.