clients verifying employment eligibility

KC

I work for an IT consulting firm that outsources 90% of it's employees. Needless to say, we verify every employees eligibility to work in the US. Recently I discovered that an employee of ours, a foreign national, was required by a client to show them her passport (they also made copies) before they would allow her to work at their site. A second employee (not a foreign national) went with her and was not required to verify employment eligibility. Can the client do this? Shouldn't they come to our HR Department for this?

System

The client behaved badly. You should tell the client to come to you if they have any questions about your employees' eligibility. You should also remind them to treat all employees equally regardless of national origin, race, etc. And you probably should apologize to the employee and tell him to tell you about any other incidents where he's treated differently from others.

It could be discrimination to single out foreign employees for this passport scrutiny, although this doesn't seem serious enough for a lawsuit. But if there are other incidents, he could sue your company (and maybe the client, too) for harassment based on national origin. And this passport incident will be very damning evidence.

James Sokolowski
Senior Editor
M. Lee Smith Publishers