Bengaluru: The Karnataka State IT/ITeS Employees Union, a registered body that represents over 1000 members from the information technology (IT) and IT-enabled services sector in the city has claimed that the sector has been slashing jobs and resorting to pay cuts since May. They say at least 3500 jobs have been cut in MSMEs in the sector.
“Some medium and small companies have been retrenching even during the lockdown and we have raised complaints not only here (Karnataka) but also with the central labor ministry. This goes against directives of both the Centre and the state that had asked companies not to lay off staff during the COVID-19 induced lockdown,” Suraj Nidiyanga, secretary of the union, said according to a report in the livemint.com
Everybody, except the government, acknowledges that the economy is in a bad shape due to a multiplicity of factors not the least of which is the lockdown. The lockdown forced employees to work from home and this might become a permanent feature of future employment especially if the COVID19 scare does not evaporate fast.
The employee union has asked for strict action against these companies. Nidiyanga named companies like Cognizant among others who were retrenching employees in the report.
Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp, however, has dismissed such allegations stating that these are not based on facts and told the Livemint “Performance management is a normal process across all companies in the IT industry, including Cognizant. While Cognizant does not comment on rumor and speculation in the marketplace, we would like to clarify that recent third party allegations regarding a specific number of job actions are not accurate, not based on facts, and were not announced by Cognizant,” the company said in a statement to Mint.
