Bengaluru: The TCS pink slip excercise the nearlyas energised the techie in Bengaluru, the hub of the IT industry. Around 100 software engineers ofthe nearly two million IT workforce in India, gathered in Blore on saturday to discuss ways to resist what appea,rs to be a large-scale retrenchment drive at the 3,13,000-strong IT services firm. While this may be a drop in the ocean, presently,given the recessionary conditions in the industry, this figure could grow rapidly.
Interestingly trade unions such as Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) and All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) have come out in support of TCS employees facing termination.
Alarmed by a possible downsizing move across the IT industry, software professionals from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and other companies came for the meeting organised by the IT&ITES Employees Centre (ITEC) and decided to conduct protest demonstration in the city in coming weeks.
TCS has so far not commented.
“The only solution is the Buddha mantra; ‘sangam sharanam gachami’ (I take refuge in organising),” said Prasannakumar, general secretary, Karnataka, CITU.
“The Indian IT industry is labour intensive in nature. Does it make any sense to argue for labour law exemptions in such an industry?” asked Satyanand Mukund, district secretary of AITUC, and a former TCS staff.
Hindustan Times quoting TCS employees gathered at the YWCA Koramangala, the venue of the meeting, confirmed there is a widespread retrenchment move within the company. The move has targeted those with 8 years experience who will necessarily find it difficult to find alternative jobs within the industry, with so many graduates preferring to join the IT industry rather than manufacturing industry every year.
“The situation is horrible. Two of my seniors got pink slips,” a TCS staff said. “It started three weeks ago and about 3,500 people across various centres have already lost their jobs. The numbers will swell in the coming weeks. This will continue on to the next quarter,” a middle-level manager said.
“The firing started with banking and finance unit, the largest segment within TCS and began in other units such as insurance,” another employee said, two of whose colleagues were asked to leave last week. Another manager who spent more than 10 years in the company said all account heads in the company were asked to give details of the staff above eight years of experience in their teams.
“The company currently has about 90,000 staff with more than eight years of experience. The plan is to bring it down to 30,000 and hire more juniors,” he said.
TCS has maintained that there is nothing out of the ordinary and involuntary attrition, which is mostly performance related, is just 1-2% of the total strength.
