On Thursday, ex-employees of IT companies such as Tech Mahindra, Wipro, and Cognizant in Pune registered different petitions in opposition to their previous employers with the Maharashtra Commissioner of Labor claiming that their services are discontinued illegitimately.
A Chennai-headquartered body, the Forum of IT Employees (FITE), was the medium to file the petitions. Over the last few weeks, FITE has been filing analogous petitions in Hyderabad and Chennai. Until now, in Pune, almost 25 ex-employees have filed petitions.
ET has gone through the petitions copy. The FITE has files analogous petitions in Bengaluru too in opposition to Tech Mahindra and Wipro, revealed FITE. Tech Mahindra said in an emailed statement that they keep on implementing strategies in order to meet the varying demands of business in the modern global economic environment.
Wipro further stated that being a performance-driven firm, they evaluate employee performance regularly and take obligatory actions. The company did not respond to emails while going to press. In the meantime, Nikhil Walke—the Additional Commissioner of Labor—visited the Cognizant employees and management, and advised them to maintain more transparency with their employees.
According to an FITE representative in Pune, Elavarasan Raja, the meeting was a positive one. “We have mentioned several times that Cognizant hasn’t conducted any layoffs and any type changes ensuing from the performance review process of the company are as expected and similar to the standard practice, which is been followed for many years by the IT industry. We take efforts to improve our capabilities and hire more people for all our practice domains in the company,” a Cognizant representative said.
Raja further mentioned that FITE is been receiving more than 500 calls per day from IT employees from over the country with same stories, from both the people who have gone through “lay off” process and even those who fear they would undergo this process. Ex-employees of both companies, Cognizant and Wipro, said that if requested to be put on a PIP (Performance Improvement Plan), the request was declined.
Will FITE give a hope to the victims of layoffs?###