The News Minute | January 6, 2014 | 11.42 am IST
Somebody at the Forum for IT Employees (FITE) has a sense of humour: after lambasting TCS’s recruitment and “involuntary attrition” policy in around 700 words in an open letter, they sign off with “We’ll write again to you some days later.”
FITE has been one of the groups that has been organizing employees from the IT sector and trying to create awareness about what the company calls “involuntary attrition” but is more commonly understood as lay-offs.
In the second week of December, TCS had said that it would engage in “workforce optimization” and in the days since, employees at the company in several cities have alleged that they have been laid off, or have been put under circumstances where they have no choice but to resign.
Since then, FITE has organized meetings of IT professionals in various cities including Bengaluru and Kochi to understand the legalities involved.
On January 6, it published an open letter to TCS, addressed to its Executive Vice President and Head for Global HR Ajoy Mukherjee. In the wake of the developments at the tech giant, FITE says it decided to “post certain facts, ask specific questions and with due respect to you, expect answers”.
It also asks whether the “call and fire” method was the same as what the company calls “involuntary attrition” and what FITE calls “illegal termination” of employees.
The letter quotes estimates that by reports in business publications, TCS is likely to let go of around 25,000 employees as a part of its “workforce optimization” process. To this, the letter says: “Would you say that TCS had been the top IT services exporter of India having these 25000 “underperformers” on board all these years?”
FITE also alleges irregularities in the claimed percentage of “normal voluntary attrition” by quoting numbers of its own. These could not be verified independently by The News Minute.
After putting these views across, the letter ends with: “Finally, we wish to say two things to your attention , first one is that TCSers got enraged only with your internal message as they are witnessing more terminations in contradictory to your statement. Secondly, the Forum for IT Employees will not remain a mute spectator to these inhuman practices and untrue statements.
“We’ll write again to you some days later.”