Workers unionise in fight against forced job cuts
section of IT workers are forming unions, poring over labour laws and making the rounds of government offices, courts and ministries. “I don’t know much about labour laws,” says Sunil Kumar, waiting his turn outside the commissioner’s office for the fifth time in three months. “But I am ready to go to the high court. The company has to take me back or give me a compensation for life.”
Since March, 31-year-old Rajesh Natarajan, the Bengaluru coordinator for FITE, has received an average of 50 calls every day from IT workers anxious about their future. A product tester at a software company, Natarajan has to step away from his desk to take these calls. Why bother when he still has a job? “For the future of the community. A job that took 50 people five years ago takes five people today. I know I won’t have a job in five years.”
IT professionals have remained outside the purview of labour laws such as the Factories Act, Industrial Disputes Act and certain state-specific regulations because these cater only to the rights of “workmen” or those without any executive powers. But in hearing after hearing at labour commissions and courts, IT unions are challenging its fairness, arguing that the impacted workers merely carried out tasks they were asked to do. “If we are not workmen, then what are we?” asks Natarajan.
However, not many are sympathetic to their plight. “I will never take up their case,” said Umesh GN, a labour lawyer in Bengaluru. “They didn’t care about anyone else when they were earning salaries of ₹2 lakh a month.” Some point to the irony that their jobs came at the cost of livelihoods in countries such as the US.
Their fight isn’t altogether doomed, though. In July, Hyderabad’s high court asked Tech Mahindra to explain the “illegal terminations” of four employees. For Lokesh Vasana, one of the four, the high court’s notice is the first instance of validation in months. “Forget rent; my 6-month-old son has been down with dengue and my family suddenly has no health insurance.”
For the Forum of IT professionals (FITP), a city-based union that made the appeal under the Shops and Establishments Act that prohibits termination of an employee while their case is in a labour court, it’s victory. “We are more hopeful about the 70 petitions we have filed at the labour commission,” said Kiran Chandra, the coordinator for FITP.