UCSF IT Workers Sue Over Age and National Origin Discrimination After Outsourcing to HCL

In mid-2016, the University of California, San Francisco notified approximately 80 information technology employees that their positions were being eliminated. The university had signed a five-year outsourcing contract with HCL Technologies, an India-based firm, projecting savings of $30 million. Career employees were expected to train their replacements via video conference before departing in February 2017.

Among the roughly 50 full-time career workers who received termination notices, 48 of 49 were 40 years old or older. The incoming HCL workforce, by contrast, was composed largely of workers in their early 20s, predominantly male, and drawn from India. That gap supplied the legal theory: attorneys J. Gary Gwilliam and Randall Strauss of Gwilliam Ivary Chiosso Cavalli & Brewer argued the pattern amounted to discrimination based on age under federal and California law, and discrimination based on national origin.

Strauss put it plainly in published interviews: "To take a workforce that is overwhelmingly over the age of 40 and replace them with folks who are mainly in their 20s, early 20s in fact, we think is age discrimination." Gwilliam added that the layoff was illegal and called on the university to reverse course. UCSF defended the contract as a lawful restructuring driven by cost savings and improved cybersecurity capabilities.

The firm filed formal complaints with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which granted affected workers the right to sue. The case attracted national attention from technology press and public interest organizations tracking H-1B outsourcing practices, drawing parallel coverage to a similar lawsuit filed in late 2016 by IT workers displaced at Disney. Congressional representatives, including Nancy Pelosi and Zoe Lofgren, raised concerns with UC leadership, though the layoffs proceeded on schedule.

The lawsuit, filed in Alameda County Superior Court, proceeded against both the university and HCL. No verdict amount or settlement figure has been disclosed in public records or press coverage.