Industrial Act Covers IT
TK.Ramesha was working with HCL Tech as a Senior Service Programmer. The company on grounds of non-performance dismissed him in January 2013. But Ramesha contested his termination by filing an industrial dispute plea, which HCL Tech contended that since Ramesha was a supervisor he is not a‘workman’ and hence cannot come under the ambit of industrial dispute act.
But the court thought otherwise. In his ruling the judge said that any skilled employee is a workman and going by that Ramesha qualified to be a workman and set aside his dismissal and ordered the company to reinstate him with full back pay.
This is indeed a landmark case as for long the white collared tech industries such as IT was out of the ambit of unions and labor courts. So any layoffs - large to small scale rarely elicited any major protests from the affected parties. A year back, laid off workers of IT major TCS went to the streets of Chennai challenging the company’s downsizing measures. This brought to fore many issues being faced by IT employees and they lacked a support system outside the confines of their companies. Till now most of the layoffs done by IT companies have been done under the pretext of non-performance and hence the sacked employees despite venting out their anger in social media rarely challenge the company’s diktat.
But at the ground zero level, the IT companies also have a case. For instance any company which has a multivertical play always have anticipated HR assets for pipeline growth and new projects. But overall recessionary trends in some of the core industries and shrinking of new client wins coupled with automation of mundane IT and business process tasks have stunted the growth opportunities of many lateral employees. When they hit the ‘Bench’ in their mid-life career point many companies see them as liabilities and after two seasons of no projects their performance obviously goes for a toss, and the “Outstanding’ and ‘Excellent’ ratings just becomes past glory. What do you think about this judgment? Is it a wake up call for IT companies? Shrikanth G Associate Editor 74 he recent judgment by a Chennai court to reinstate a sacked staffer of IT major HCL Technologies is seen as a landmark judgment that can permanently alter IT HR management in the days ahead.