NEW DELHI: Infosys, which was notified by the Ministry of Labour and Employment to attend a discussion on its non-compete clause, skipped the meeting on Thursday. The next date for the discussion is May 16, 2022.
Taking cognizance of the IT employees' union NITES' complaint on the non-compete clause added by Infosys in its offer letters, the labour ministry had decided to hold a tripartite joint discussion on the issue on Thursday, April 28.
NITES President Harpreet Singh Saluja said Infosys was absent from the meeting. Saluja, who represented the IT employees at the meeting said, "NITES has strongly demanded that the illegal non compete agreement should be removed from the offer letters of employees."
Responding to the backlash, Infosys earlier in a statement said that it is a 'standard business practice' in many parts of the world for employment contracts to include controls of reasonable scope and duration to protect confidentiality of information, customer connection and other legitimate business interests.
"These are fully disclosed to all job aspirants before they decide to join Infosys...," it had said.
The company's contract stated that for six months following the termination of employment, the employee won't accept a job offer from any customer with whom they had worked in a professional capacity. They are also barred from accepting any offer from any named competitor of Infosys if it will involve them having to work with a customer with whom they had worked in the 12 months preceding the termination of employment.
The 'Named Competitor', according to the company contract, includes TCS, Accenture, IBM, Cognizant and Wipro.