HYDERABAD: The Forum for IT Employees, the union that is represents sacked techies in Chennai, trying to get a union registration from the Tamil Nadu labour department to better argue the cases of those who are laid off. FITE representatives are encouraging affected techies to approach labour commissioners in Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru, Pune and other places in the last few weeks.
Due to the lack of registration, labour department officials are not accepting its representations and are directing the techies to give their letters individually. FITE vice-president Rajan Gandhi, who works in Chennai, said the forum had applied for registration twice earlier but they were rejected due to the lack of certain documents. “We are taking legal help to get all required papers and then apply again,” he said. Mr Gandhi said FITE had established chapters in Chennai, Kochi, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune and Delhi, and techies from different cities were approaching them for assistance in view of the present lay-offs.
He said the forum’s objective is to protect the interests of employees in the wake of the unexpected crisis. Hyderabad has the Telangana IT Association with over 10,000 members working in different IT and ITES companies. This organisation is more into conducting digital awareness campaigns across the state and has teamed up with the Telangana state government and institutions like T-Hub and TASK.
TITA president Sundeep Makthala said there were two ways to look into unionisation. “It is always good to have a forum to speak about the interests of employees and any issues that one might face at the workplace, like in the case of women staff. But exerting pressure on managements on lay-offs might impact the IT industry,” Mr Makhthala said.
“Unlike in other private sector firms that run their business locally, work in most IT firms is done on laptops and even from homes. For IT companies, taking a decision to relocate to another destination is not a big one,” he said.
