Nearly 60,000 employees in the information technology sector have lost their jobs in the last two years, and around 20,000 in last two months alone, according to AJ Vinodh, General Secretary, Forum for IT Employees (FITE), which is fighting for rights of IT employees.

Companies should reinstate these terminated employees, and State government should intervene in the matter, he told newspersons.

Vinodh said nearly 85 employees of various IT and telecom companies who lost their jobs have filed cases in various State labour departments against their terminations. The ‘affected’ employees filed the cases with the forum’s help under Industrial Dispute Act 2A or 2K, he said.

Of the 85 employees, 47 filed the cases in Labour department in Pune against companies such as Cognizant, Wipro, Vodafone, Syntel and Tech Mahindra and 11 in Chennai against Cognizant. In Bengaluru, nine employees filed cases against Tech Mahindra and Wipro and two employees filed cases in Noida, said Vinodh without giving names of the employees.

“We want to protect the identity of the affected employees. With their permission, we will give the names at a later stage,” he said.

Vinodh sought help of governments to prevent IT companies terminating their employees in the name of poor performance. They provided land to IT companies and created infrastructure like Special Economic Zones to create jobs. However, companies are terminating employees, he said.

The forum recently met Karnataka IT Minister seeking support for welfare of IT employees. It plans to meet representatives from various political parties and unions to seek their support, said Vinodh.

While the forum wants to spread unionisation in the IT sector, there is resistance among IT employees fearing that any association with a union could affect getting jobs with another company.

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