Tamil Nadu techies to form India's first IT union
- Techies to form union in Tamil Nadu after the recent spate of layoffs by Cognizant.
- More than 100 software professionals have signed up as members.
- Tamil Nadu has an estimated 4.5 lakh techies working in various sectors.
FollowA week after Cognizant held out pink slips to a lot of its employees, techies in Tamil Nadu have declared that they would form a union. More than 100 software professionals have signed up as members. To be named as the "Forum for IT Employees", the forum will not only cater to issues faced by employees, but will also entertain problems faced by women in IT.
According to inside sources, Tamil Nadu has an estimated 4.5 lakh techies working in various sectors, but most of them are reluctant to join the union because they fear their employers would be unhappy about it.
Tamil Nadu clubs with Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka as these states are the highest exporters of IT services. Last year alone, the state changed laws to allow trade unions in the IT sector after hundreds of employees were laid off by TCS in 2015.
The employees who were laid off by Cognizant complained to the Tamil Nadu government, saying that they were given a wrong pretext for being laid off. This same thing had repeated during another spate of layoffs in 2015 when 5% of the total 260,000 were laid off.
According to a recent observation by experts, it is believed that the lay offs in the IT industry this year would be between 2% and 3%, much higher than the recent percentage of pink slip holders in the recent years.
