Ruling reinstates doctor fired for backing foreign colleagues

A VA spokeswoman said they are complying with the Labor Dept. order.

By Amy Lynn Sorrel, AMNews staff. March 19, 2007.

The Dept. of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Fargo, N.D., must reinstate, with back pay, a physician who said he was fired for speaking out about pay discrimination against H1-B visa doctors.

The physician at the center of the case hopes the decision from the U.S. Dept. of Labor in January will have far-reaching implications for foreign-born physicians practicing in the United States.

"What this has done is told the entire VA system they can't discriminate on the basis of pay and get away with it. They are expected to behave like any other employer," said Rudranath Talukdar, MD, the internist who brought the action.

Dr. Talukdar, who now works in Houston, was terminated in 2002 after participating in a federal investigation into whether the VAMC was underpaying doctors in the visa program. As a result of the audit, the Wage and Hour Division of the Labor Dept. ordered the hospital to pay more than $200,000 in back wages to several doctors, court documents show.

The H1-B visa program allows employers to hire nonimmigrant, noncitizen doctors on a temporary basis. But employees must be paid the same as a U.S. citizen. The federal law also protects foreign-born doctors from retaliation under whistle-blower provisions.