Laid off IT employees initiates legal battle

10/08/2017

PUNE: Former employees of Tech Mahindra, Wipro and Vodafone, who were laid off in the recent past, have joined hands and taken up a legal battle against their respective companies. Labour commissioner office in Pune has received total 12 complaints from such professionals challenging their termination which the labour office will be referring to the labour court as the officials have found these complaints genuine.

The professionals have come together under the umbrella of Pune unit of Forum for Information Technology Employees (FITE) and they have submitted their complaint applications to the labour commissioner office. According to the FITE office bearers, over 100 such applications have been submitted to the labour commissioner office across the country including places like Chennai, Hyderabad, Noida, Bengaluru and Mumbai.

Elavasaran Raja, Pune and Mumbai coordinator for FITE, said, "IT companies are blatantly violating labour laws and they are terminating employees illegally. We decided to bring such employees together to fight for their rights and we have helped these employees to file complaints with the labour commissioner office."

"In Pune, over 40 complaints applications were submitted in the labour commissioner office. After filing the complaints, the labour commissioner officials initiated meetings with the officials of the concerned companies after which some of the companies revised their decisions. However, there are still 12 professionals who have not been reinstated and therefore we have decided to take their battle the legal way," Raja added.

According to the labour commissioner officials, out of the 12 employees, ten are from Tech Mahindra, one is from Wipro and another one is from Vodafone. Speaking to pune-news.com, Nikhil Walke, assistant labour commissioner, said, "While terminating these employees, the management have cited three to four common reasons which includes below par performance, employees not upgrading themselves according to the new technology, changing global scenario and slow down. After receiving the complaints, we called up the officials of the companies where we tried to resolve the issue through dialogues. In some cases, companies did not change their stand and they remained firm on their decision."

Before moving to the labour court, the labour commissioner officials had called a final meeting to see if the issue can be resolved. However, no company official from any of the companies turned up for the meeting. Now, the labour commissioner office has initiated the process of referring these cases to labour court.

Harish Puri, government labour officer, Pune, said, "Looking at these 12 applications, prima facie it looks like there is a violation of the rights of these professionals. After the final attempt of reconciliation also failed, we have now decided to refer these cases to the labour court under the section 2 (a) of the Industrial Dispute Act 1947. The cases which we are referring to the court are of the employees from Wipro, Tech Mahindra and Vodafone."

According to the professionals who have lost their jobs, they are ready to face the legal battle to get the justice. Sudeshna Sen, who was working with Vodafone in Pune said, "The company asked me to resign forcefully and when I refused to give my resignation and asked them to terminate me, they started threatening me. I have decided to take up the legal battle to get back my job."