Statement against Mass Layoffs in the IT/ITes Sector
On the 7th of February, 700 trainees were laid off by Infosys at its Mysore campus. These trainees, who had to wait for 2.5 years after their graduation to finally start their careers at Infosys in September 2024, are now jobless just six months later. They were asked to come in batches of 50 to submit their laptops and were escorted into a room with security personnel and bouncers stationed outside. Several trainees were abruptly asked to vacate the Mysuru campus as their employment was terminated without warning. The Infosys management initially remained silent on the matter but later stated that the layoffs occurred due to “performance-related issues.” Interestingly, Infosys has deferred internal assessments for around 800 trainees after the news about the layoffs went viral. Is Infosys anticipating “performance-related issues” for those trainees as well?Infosys is not the only IT firm that has laid off hundreds of employees recently. Over the past three years, there has been an alarming rise in the sudden termination of workers across the sector. Wipro announced plans to cut hundreds of mid-level roles last year. Meanwhile, the food delivery app Swiggy fired 400 employees in January 2024, while the e-commerce company Flipkart laid off 1,000 employees. In the last week of December 2023, Paytm announced it would be firing 1,000 employees across multiple departments as a cost-cutting measure. In fact, across the globe, 100,000 jobs have been cut in the second half of 2024. Several big tech firms have also been following what has been termed as “silent layoffs,” where employees are given a 30-day period to find a new role within the company. Failure to secure a new role results in termination. This method allows these companies to quietly reduce their workforce, avoiding public scrutiny and backlash. Therefore, the actual figures on job loss in the sector might be even higher.
Amidst a downturn in the global economy, these companies irresponsibly claim that “layoffs cannot be avoided,” as stated by Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan. While cost-cutting seems to be the priority for tech firms to maintain their profitability, such measures are not applied to the higher management and executives within these companies. According to a report by Moneycontrol in December last year, the salaries of CEOs of India’s top five IT companies surged by over 160% in the last five years, while freshers have seen an increase of less than 4% during the same period. In fact, the salaries of entry-level employees have remained almost constant over the last 10 years. Such is the situation of the much-hyped tech boom in “Vishwaguru Bharat.”
While the youth today are being forced to pay lakhs of rupees to obtain technical degrees due to rising fees in the limited number of government institutes, and the proliferation of private educational institutes (which charge, on an average, 20 lakhs for an engineering degree) there seems to be no assurance of landing a job once we have acquired these degrees. This leaves us burdened with educational loans and serious mental health issues. To rub salt to our wounds, individuals like Narayana Murthy of Infosys and the CEO of L&T, S.N. Subrahmanyan, are asking employees to work 90 hours a week. We ask these so-called industry leaders: Where are the jobs for us to work 90 hours a week? Clearly, the neoliberal policies that have been in place for decades, which portrayed the private sector as “job creators,” have massively failed the youth of the country.
Naujawan Bharat Sabha strongly condemns the actions of Infosys as well as other tech firms that have been terminating employees. The “use-and-throw labour” model that these organizations follow needs to be challenged. We urge the youth of the country to organize and fight against these exploitative practices. We also call on the youth to resist the new labour codes, which will dilute even the minimal labour protections currently in place. Furthermore, we appeal to the youth to join the struggle for free and equal education for all, as well as the enactment of the Bhagat Singh National Employment Guarantee Act, which would make the right to work a fundamental right. As we face a severe unemployment crisis, we must unite to challenge this unjust system that prioritizes corporate profits over the well-being of the very workers who generate these profits.