HYDERABAD: Two more employees of the Tech Mahindra, who were sacked, have filed a petition with the Telangana Joint Labour Commission seeking justice. Even as several IT professionals were terminated from their services at the software giant in past few months, another employee was sacked last week on the backend, whereas the second one was asked to resign by month end.
“I was asked to resign voluntarily within a week’s time. But, I didn’t. Then, on the day when they wanted me to resign, the HR people threatened me that they would not give any resignation benefits. Eventually, the company terminated me,” said a gloomy employee, on condition of anonymity.
According to Forum for IT Professionals, close to 7,000 people have been terminated from their jobs from various top-notch IT firms like Tech Mahindra, Cognizant and other companies in Hyderabad. Most of the employees were shown the door as a measure to downsize the organisation in order to cut cost. Against this backdrop, sacked IT employees are knocking the door of state labour department, seeking justice. “I was selected by Tech Mahindra for the bench, basically as a reserve, and for a year no project had been assigned to me. Is it my mistake or theirs?” questions the employee, who has recently been sacked from the Tech Mahindra.
The Chief Executive Officer of Tech Mahindra, CP Gurnani, however, didn’t respond to an e-mail sent by Express on the present scenario of layoffs affecting the future of various software professionals. With an increasing pool of grieved employees being terminated by tech majors, there seems to be no aid that would come to the rescue of the employees, other than negotiation by the companies, which usually end in an ‘over the table settlement’.
Interestingly, the state Joint Labour Commissioner dusted off the layoffs as a yearly affair which is common, employees across do not seem to buy the argument. As of now, the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 and the Shops and Establishment Act, 1953 are the current labour laws that are used to file petitions.
Inception of a Union?
There is no law that curtails employees from forming an employee union, but the majority of them choose not to, fearing loss of job or harassment at workplace. “Individually, if someone wants to fight for their cause, hardly anyone would turn up. A union adds an advantage in that scenario where there is a strong backup and the employee can fight any kind of bias against them,” said Sundeep Kumar Makthala, Global President, TS Information Technology Association. While there are several forums that are present in India, most of them are confined to a particular region. Kiran Chandra of Forum of IT Professionals felt that the NASSCOM, a trade association of IT companies, is not at all transparent in its functioning.