A week after news of the shutting down of the Thiruvananthapuram Technopark office of Byju’s broke out, the edtech unicorn backed out of the decision on Wednesday, November 2. The settlement was arrived at after a discussion between the Byju’s management and representatives of Prathidhwani in the presence of Kerala Labour Commissioner K Vasuki. Prathidwani, a welfare organisation of Technopark employees, announced the news on its Facebook page and called it a “a victory for IT employees and Prathidhwani.”
Byju’s agreed to four major demands in the meeting. The first of them was that the startup’s Media Development Centre would continue operations from its Technopark office in Thiruvananthapuram. The company agreed that the status quo as of September 2022 will be maintained. Out of the 170 employees in the office, 70 had put in papers in October following the management’s pressure to resign. Byju’s agreed to take back those employees who were forced to resign last month.
“We had expected November 2 to be our last day at the office. Now that they have reverted the shutdown, we can continue. We got October's salary on Tuesday. They have promised to call back all employees who were forced to resign. However, we have not received any official email regarding this so far. We have asked for it and hopefully will get it soon,” one of the employees told TNM.
The company also agreed to the demand that there would be no retaliatory action or revenge behaviour towards the employees. The fear of retaliatory action from the management stemmed from its actions in the past month. As pressure mounted on the employees with the management seeking their resignation and threatening to fire them if they did not comply, representatives of the employees had met with Labour Minister V Sivankutty on October 25. After the incident garnered media attention, the management had announced that the employees in Thiruvananthapuram would be transferred to Bengaluru when the office shut down. The employees' incredulity about a promise of transfer proved to be well-founded when news of the shutdown of Byju’s Bengaluru office also came out.
Finally, Byju’s also agreed to send an official communication to all employees regarding the decisions made during the meeting. In the process of shutting down the office last month, there was total lack of official communication from the company management until outrage over its actions was published in the media. The employees got their first official communication only on the night of October 25, hours after they met with the Labour Minister.
The meeting on Wednesday was attended by the Labour Commissioner K Vasuki, Byju’s vice president Jayadev, Prathidhwani secretary Vineeth Chandran and state convenor Rajeev Krishnan and employee representatives from Byju’s.