Tamil Nadu techies association to form India’s 1st IT trade union

A spate of retrenchment episodes that transpired over the past few weeks including those of CTS and Tech Mahindra has put the spotlight on this group, that has floated a petition on change.org, urging to put a ‘stop on mass illegal terminations’ citing issues such as non-performance and seeking ‘intervention’ from those in power. 

Rajan Gandhi, the convenor of the Association said, “We have already applied for registration as trade union and our application has been returned for rectification twice from the Labour Department. So the process is already on for us to become an IT union.”

Sathish Mohanakrishnan, the General Secretary of a splinter group, who separated from the original FITE association, but chose to retain the group’s name, said, “We have between 1,200-1,300 registered members hailing from 60-70 companies in the IT-enabled space. From 1991, when this sector began growing, the employees have had no representation whatsoever. We intend to offer workers in this sector a platform to voice their grievances and find ways to bring them justice if they have been terminated illegally. With respect to under-performers, a company needs to provide a show cause notice to the employee and ascertain the reasons for non-performance before taking more serious steps such as termination.” A recent Nasscom study had also pegged the loss of jobs between 2-3 lakhs owing to various factors influencing the sector including geopolitical developments.

In a first, techies working with the Cognizant Technology Solutions(CTS) and those who resigned after being allegedly ‘forced’ by the management dragged the IT major to the State’s Labour Commission for conciliation on Wednesday. The first round among the CTS employees and its management took place before the Joint Commissioner of Labour R Ravishankar at his Teynampet office in DMS Complex. The meeting lasted for about an hour. The second round of conciliation has been scheduled on May 22. “CTS management informed the Labour department that they would ascertain the claims made by its employees. The management also assured that they would revert the developments, if it were to be found true,” Vinoth, General Secretary, Forum for IT Employees (FITE) told DTNext. 

When contacted, a CTS spokesperson refrained from commenting on the meeting. The labour commissioner could not be contacted for his comment.