TAMPA, Fla., Jan. 26 (UPI) — Disney is being sued by two former employees in a pair of lawsuits that claim the company conspired with outsourcing firms to swap U.S. workers with cheap immigrant workers on temporary visas.
The lawsuits were filed in a Florida federal court by Dena Moore and Leo Perrero, two of 250 Disney tech workers laid off about a year ago.
Both lawsuits seek class-action status and both claim Walt Disney World, and outsourcing companies HCL and Cognizant colluded to get rid of U.S. workers and replace them with temporary immigrant workers on H-1B visas.
The suit intends to “stop them from systemically abusing the immigration system,” Sara Blackwell, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told the Orlando Sentinel.
“I don’t have to be angry or cause drama,” said Moore, a 10-year employee. “But they are just doing things to save a buck, and it’s making Americans poor.”
Perrero and Moore were forced to train their replacements. Moore applied for more than 150 other Disney jobs with no success.
Disney scoffed at the lawsuit. “These lawsuits are based on an unsustainable legal theory and are a wholesale misrepresentation of the facts,” the company said in a statement. It also claimed to hire back more than 100 of the laid off workers.
Perrero said he only knew off two who were hired back for tech jobs.
