A senior official of the Labour Department on Thursday held a meeting with a team from the management of Cognizant and a small group of employees of the IT firm on the apprehensions raised by latter about their jobs.
Coming in the backdrop of reports of several IT companies giving shape to layoff plans, the meeting, chaired by Joint Commissioner of Labour R. Chandra Shekaram, followed a petition from the Forum for IT Employees.
With the Cognizant management team seeking time to submit detailed reply, related to each of the employees, May 26 has been fixed as date for the next meeting, according to Joint Commissioner (RR Zone, Hyderabad).
Eight employees of the IT firm had approached the Labour Department through the forum. Of them, three had resigned and were serving the notice period, while the others were apprehensive of losing their jobs. While those who had resigned wanted to rejoin the company, the other wanted assurance from the company with regard to the job, he said.
Thursday’s meeting was to understand the issue, with the employees alleging that they were forced to resign, the official said, adding that the company, however denied that it was resorting to layoff.
The forum had pointed out that layoff had become common in the IT industry and the companies were replacing highly paid experienced employees with new recruits with less experience on lower salaries. The forum had alleged that Cognizant was terminating thousands of employees.
Stating that the company had not done any layoff, a spokesperson of Cognizant said: “Each year we conduct performance review to ensure we have the right employee skill sets necessary to meet client needs and achieve our business goals. This process results in changes, including some employees transitioning out of the company. Any actions as a result of this process are performance-based and generally consistent with those we’ve made in previous years.”
Telangana Information Technology Association (TITA), whose representatives were present at the meeting, advocated a rational and realistic approach by all the stakeholders to contain the ill-effects of layoff and cost cutting measures by the IT industry globally.
In a release, founder and global president Sundeep Kumar Makthala said the situation for employees was indeed distressful but this phase could be dealt with if proper measures were taken. “While industry must have a rational approach towards cost cutting and laying off employees, the State government or Labour Department must ensure that ousted employees are accommodated in the State run IT programmes.”
