How to Face Layoff Threat and Win

We received this email in May 2017

My Experience

I am from Cognizant-Coimbatore with 6.5 Years of experience in the same company.

I got MS rating in this appraisal cycle and till now I am working in a project. Today I received a call from my manager and he warn me that “HR initiate your project release without my approval and it might be the sign of Layoff”. I too suspect that it might be the cheap HR strategy for Layoff.

Moreover I have following evidence regarding my employment .

Recent client appreciation mail which is followed by delivery director’s appreciation.

Evidence for my average working hours which exceeds 10.5 hrs per day (Normally CTS bills the client for 8hrs/day but in our case it will bill upto 8.5-9 hrs/day for this purpose they want us to maintain 10 hrs /week)

Client timesheet in which cognizant bills for 8.5 hrs (Normally it would be 8)

Cognizant timesheet in which cognizant ask us to log for 8.5hrs (Normally it would be 8)

Evidence for asking me to take company laptops on weekends for providing week end support (They will not provide any comp-off /Allowance for this)

2. Subsequently, the concerned employee posted this message in their facebook account

How I am going to fight this?

Each and Every IT employee wants to protect their employment rights, safeguard against exploitation, illegal forced resignation, layoff’s and other form of retrenchments in the future.

To do this forming “Trade Union” under Trade union act of 1926 is the only way so that we can file a collective dispute against an employer under the Industrial dispute act of 1947.

Now New Democratic Labour Front (NDLF) is a well-established Trade union operating for labour right in various sectors including IT Employees Wing is coordinating forming of union in different companies.

If you are interested to be a part of this trade union, kindly refer below and contact NDLF IT Employees Wing – 90031 98576 combatlayoff@gmail.com

The employee refused to succumb to the threats and pressure by HR.

The employee complained to the labour department in Coimbatore along with 4 others. After 2-3 hearings in which HR from Cognizant took part, all of them got project allocation with Performance Improvement Plan.

The employees write up about this

Labor officer, Cognizant Employees, Cognizant HR along with NDLF representative attended the conciliation meeting on June 6th and Employees concerns were raised. A follow-up meeting was held on June 15th.

Forcefully terminated employees who filed 2A argued about their ill treatment by Cognizant HR department. Labor officer advised the management to revoke their resignation which was forcibly obtained.

Profile masking was brought up and HR agreed to give allocations for 5 employees whose profiles were masked.

Unfair mandated MS rating to 10% of employees was raised and employees asked for relook at rating process. HR department denied this and argued that there was no bell curve concept. This is an utter and ugly lie, even entry level employees know very well about the bell curve in appraisal process.

Employees also brought up the absence of HR grievance process and Performance improvement program(PIP) this year. HR kept silent.

Finally follow-up meeting end up with success for the employees.

Two resigned employees were promised to be taken back and 5 employees whose project allocation was blocked due to profile masking were assured of project allocations.

Anyone facing similar situation,