According to sources, the Labour Department sent a notice to the company after the Karnataka State IT/ITeS Employees Union (KITU) filed an industrial dispute case, following a controversy surrounding a layoff announcement and alleged forced resignations at IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).
Conciliatory Meeting Scheduled for August 6
A conciliatory conference between KITU representatives and TCS management, with Labour Department officials present, is scheduled for August 6, according to several media outlets. TCS declared on July 27 that 2% of its employees worldwide would be let go.
This would represent over 12,000 workers. The company’s new “Bench Policy,” which caps an employee’s time on the bench at 35 hours per year, has also sparked allegations of coerced resignations. Employees complain that they have too little time to locate appropriate tasks and that this places the burden of project finding on them.
Inside TCS’s Controversial New Bench Policy
In response to these events, union representatives met with officials from the Labour Department on July 29 and filed a case against TCS for illegal mass retrenchment. They demanded that the management be prosecuted for violating the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, and the Karnataka government’s requirements regarding the reporting of service particulars.
The Industrial Disputes Act mandates that businesses with more than 100 employees must first get government approval before implementing any layoffs or retrenchments. Such layoffs are only allowed for certain purposes and under circumstances that are spelt out in detail in the Act.
According to the union, TCS workers who were allegedly being pressured to quit by management filed many complaints. A media outlet interviewed a mid-level TCS employee who said that hundreds of workers from the company’s Bengaluru branch had been pushed to quit over the previous two weeks.
TCS Responds: ‘Building a Future-Ready Workforce’
TCS said it is working to become a future-ready company in response to questions from the media. This covers a number of strategic goals, such as investing in new technology, breaking into new markets, implementing AI on a large scale for both TCS and its clients, strengthening its alliances, developing next-generation infrastructure, and reorienting our workforce model.
Numerous reskilling and redeployment programs have been in progress in order to achieve this. TCS will also be letting go of associates from the company whose deployment might not be possible as part of this journey.
Over the course of the year, this will affect roughly 2% of the company’s staff worldwide, mostly in the middle and senior grades. To make sure that its clients’ service delivery is unaffected, this transition is being carefully handled.
TCS is aware that its coworkers who may be impacted are going through a difficult moment. It expressed gratitude for their service and promised to do everything in its power to offer suitable benefits, outplacement, counselling, and assistance as they move on to new opportunities.
Leave a Reply