Techie: Politics over dead IT professionals is wrong

Hyderabad: Techies in the city got together at Lamakaan on Saturday to discuss the vulnerabilities in their field owing to the prevailing economic and social situations in the country and around the globe. 

Over 25 working techies, ex-employees and those serving notice periods from over 15 IT companies joined the talk where the focus was mainly on how the government must make a push at diplomats’ level to overcome the “protectionist” attitude of the Trump administration in the US, and help Indian techies get jobs. Recently, a lot of IT companies cited tighter visa laws and high costs as reasons for the layoffs of over 6,000 employees. 

Kiran Chandra, founding member of ForIT, a welfare organisation for IT professionals, said, “India must take this up at the international fora. The politics over dead IT professionals is wrong, when in the country itself there’s so much instability for working professionals.” 

Companies like Wipro and Cognizant are planning to lay off their employees citing reasons like automation. But Mr Chandra said such layoffs based on automation were wrong as IT professionals were the only workmen since Industrial Revolution to have faced such rapid technological changes in a short span. 

“IT industry, which is on a downsizing campaign, has not been exempted from labour laws. These companies are using nasty means to force people to resign. They even use backhand, automated means to initiate resignations through the login IDs of employees,” he said. Pravallika, another member of the forum, narrated her friend’s experience wherein her service was initially terminated and later she was called in and forced to resign. 

The Indian employment and labour act prohibits such firing practices -- ie, if anyone wants to resign they must personally sign the document. 

Kiran claimed that employees were being called to rooms and harassed to sign resignation papers and when they failed to do so, automated resignations were initiated.