KOCHI: Giving a temporary relief to the employees who are hit hard by the lay-off at TCS, Minister for Labour Shibu Baby John has directed the Regional Joint Labour Commissioner, Ernakulam, to file an urgent report on the issue after conducting an inquiry into the matter.
The minister issued the order based on media reports on the lay-off move initiated by the company. “The order was issued as per the reports that appeared in the newspapers about the mass lay-off. I have asked the Labour Commissioner to file an urgent report after carrying out a thorough investigation into the matter,” Shibu Baby John said and added that
the report will be available within a week. “We would be able to comment on the issue only after the commissioner files a report. If the lay-off is found to be true, stringent action will be taken against those concerned,” the minister said.
According to highly placed sources in TCS, the company has issued as many as 40 termination letters to its employees and has planned around 500 termination letters in this fiscal. The protest kickstarted by the Forum for IT Employees (FITE) and the solidarity move initiated by various trade unions- CITU, INTUC, NDLF, Association of IT Employees (AITE) and other parties had stalled the lay-off move for some days. But the TCS top honchos held a meeting with the HR department on Monday and decided to go ahead with the lay-off plan.
The employees who were terminated are all set to stage a mass protest in front of the company in association with the FITE and other political organisations in the coming month. Meanwhile, the Association of IT Employees submitted a memorandum to the Regional Joint Labour Commissioner seeking to stop the illegal, unethical and inhuman lay-off and to reinstate the terminated staff.
Association general secretary A D Jayan, along with R Ratheesh, Sini George and the terminated employees, submitted a letter in this regard to the commissioner on Thursday. “The terminated employees have an experience of eight years or more. The TCS has not intimated the District Labour Officer or government authorities before the retrenchment,” Jayan told Express.Along with the employees who are retrenched, around 1,500 employees in TCS Kochi office are not being allocated to any project, he said. “If the illegal act is not stopped, it will have serious repercussions. Also mass agitation will be launched against the company,” he said.