IT Employees vs Corporates

Things are getting tougher for IT industry and  the corporates seek to shift all the burden of uncertainty on to the employees. They want to safeguard their profit rates (quarterly results); they award CEOs and top managements huge compensation packages; they pump money to share holders; employees get the short end of the stick. Pay cuts, delayed hikes, increased work load, long notice period after resignation and just getting thrown out  when not needed, this is the lot of employees.

Economic Times has a story on the notice period for leaving employees.

Angry with poor pay hike and lack of growth, Indian techies push government to make resigning easier –

some excerpts (bold highlighting added throughout)

“Over 28,000 professionals have signed an online petition asking the ministry of labour to stop IT companies from holding workers to a three-month non-negotiable notice period.”

“Tech Mahindra has suspended the salary revision process for employees with more than six years of experience, pending a management review. National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) has also postponed setting a target for industry growth until May as the industry battles slowing growth and regulatory hurdles in the US, its largest market.” This is one of the bench marks used by companies to set salary hike levels.

“In the IT services sector, employees are billable resources and it is likely that a company will lose money if a suitable replacement is not found, forcing companies to adopt every method to retain employees.” This nails it. Employees are resources, not human beings with a life. Employee lives are manipulated only to ensure that “company will make money”.

There are some insightful comments by readers for the article

Vishwanath Patige
“Look at career path of IT employees. There is no security inbuilt for employees in IT industry. There is no guarantee of standard salaries, packages, which can be called decent. IT employees can not plan a secure future. Social security is not in place. Because of their nature of work they face health hazard.

It is not enough to become a billion dollar company, they should also invest in the total welfare of the employees who build billion dollar revenues to these companies. Mere picking some from American labor laws, practices and few from our country is not going to help. IT companies should rise above the level of mere body shopping. Profit ”only” should not be the motive. A fresher now does not get package even half of what they got decade ago.”

Vishwas Kanade

“These IT companies are exploiting people by having such clauses. Standard clause of one month notice period is OK. All these IT companies eg TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL tech, Tech Mahindra do body shopping at lowest price and then they reward their CEO and MD and directors a hefty commission. this is ridiculous.”

Anaam
“If 3 months notice period is a must, it must co exist with 6 months of paid notice from a company in case an employee is fired”

Anil
“If company feels a resource plays a key role in project and his skill set cannot be replace in 3 months, they why company is insulting them by giving low single digit hike? When it comes to notice companies consider them as critical resource but the same importance has been missing during hike.”

Vipin Raj

“In US/Canada/UK, if companies fire any employee they need to pay handsome amount to that employee & even notice period is also not more than 2 weeks. Indian companies tend to hire lot of people because labour cost is less, don”t give them hike even company is making profit. if companies go in loss, fire them. That”s the funda they follow. Govt should make rules stricter for companies also so that there would be job security & flexibility.”

Jay

“It is human right abuse. I have not seen in US/Canada /Australia? So if client projects in US/Canada/Australia if they don”t have this rule why Indian IT companies have tbis rule. What they, they find someone who can do the job. IT companies have ganged up to made up this rule so they don”t poach each other and employees jumping within few months. All busllshit reason by IT companies . if they need to avoid put 3 month rule within a year and after a year 1 month rule.”

Simmon Swain

“Has it been happened in US, there could be a class suite and the IT cos would be heavily penalized for this kind of unfair trade practice….Unfortunately we are in India and Govt is baby doll for these IT biggies. Why Govt is not including IT professional under ambit of Labor law???????? Such demand is pending for last 10 years….”

To read the original story

Angry with poor pay hike and lack of growth, Indian techies push government to make resigning easier