IT professionals to fight retrenchment moves

Against the backdrop of the retrenchment at Tata Consultancy Services, a fistful of associations of IT professionals formed recently plan to hold a brainstorming session in Bengaluru on February 7 to formulate a nationwide campaign.

The meeting, which will have representatives from units of TCS, will discuss ways to bridge the gap between IT professionals and the trade union movement. Forming of a countrywide umbrella organisation to carry forward the struggle against the retrenchment at TCS as well as those likely in other IT companies would be among the discussion points.

Only select people from the respective associations (which function almost like underground organisations) from the TCS units have been invited to the session which has not been widely publicised. The session, organised mainly by the CPI (M)’s labour wing CITU (Centre for Indian Trade Unions), is expected to come up with plans to forestall spreading of the ‘pink slip syndrome’ from TCS to other IT companies.

Meanwhile, in Kochi, a small band of sacked TCS employees, appeared for a news conference on Wednesday wearing masks that carried the image of TCS Chief Executive Officer N. Chandrasekaran.

The news conference, called by the CITU-linked Association of IT Employees (AITE), demanded the reinstatement of all the retrenched and announced that resistance to the mass sacking would be intensified.

The masks, the employees said, represented the ongoing clandestine retrenchment of thousands of software professionals who have worked for the IT major for eight years and more. The masks also represented the growing resistance to the sacking and the employees’ increasing solidarity and unity.

R. Ratheesh, a manager-level IT professional at TCS, Kochi, who is the Ernakulam district secretary of AITE, told BusinessLine that the company had temporarily frozen the retrenchment. He said around 100 mid-career software professionals who had worked for eight or more years had earlier been served termination notices. Of them, 30 have already been sacked. Though they had been asked to leave because of underperformance, most of them had received a score of three-plus (above expectation level) in the last half-yearly performance assessment. He said some 1,400 of the more than 5,000 employees at TCS here were ‘benched.’

Ratheesh said the temporary freeze was forced by the resistance of the IT employees and adverse media publicity. He feared the company might revive the mass sacking of associate consultants and assistant consultants after the next performance appraisal due in March.

AD Jayan, State general secretary, AITE, said that the IT professionals had now realised the advantages of unity. He said he had asked the State government to pressure the TCS to reinstate the sacked professionals.

COMMENT NOW