An open letter to Mr.Ajoy Mukherjee, EVP and Head, Global HR, TCS!

An open letter to Mr.Ajoy Mukherjee, EVP and Head, Global HR, TCS!

To

Mr.Ajoy Mukherjee,
EVP and Head – Global HR,
Tata Consultancy Services

In support of our fellow IT employees who were illegally terminated from employment and those who are currently facing uncertainty in continuance of job at TCS, we the members of Forum for IT Employees intend to post certain facts, ask specific questions and with due respect to you, expect answers.

On December 12, 2014, International Business Times quoted that as part of your exercise called “workforce optimization”, 25,000 employees were going to face “evaluation” and the exercise was planned to be completed by February 2015. Subsequently many employees with experience more than 10 years were expelled without any justification. When we say “expelled without any justification”, we substantiate the phrase with evidences collected from employees and stated below,

1) The job termination letter forcefully handed over to employees – which points to abstract reason for termination.

2) The process carried out for job termination – no real criteria to declare the laid off employees as “underperformers” which amounts to ruining their careers.

We ascertain the fact that sending off employees who were all these years hailed as “pillars of TCS” is nothing but breach of trust. We would appreciate if you can provide clarification to the below questions:

–  Is this very “call and fire” method you had referred as “Involuntary attrition”?

–  Are there any specific criteria laid out to your HR Managers for identifying these “underperformers”?

–   What system was in place to validate if the HR managers adhered to those guidelines (if there was any)?

–  Would you say that TCS had been the top IT services exporter of India having these 25000 “underperformers” on board all these years?

You could refute the number 25000 but the facts say otherwise. Here it is: At the end of the second quarter that ended 30th September 2014, TCS had a total of 3, 13,757 employees, including gross addition of 20,000. Highly placed internal sources say, the total employee strength of TCS was reduced to 3, 05,431 as on December 26, 2014. Say, if the recruitment made in the third quarter was just half as the second quarter which is 10,000, at least 18,326 employees exit from TCS is in question. Say at the maximum, 50% of this figure of 18,326 employees has left voluntarily from the company, the rest 50% which is over 9,000 employees – at least 3% of the total employee strength should have faced the axe in the third quarter. This data refutes your claim of ‘”normal involuntary attrition” of about 1% -1.5 % annually. The expulsion figure in the third quarter, calculated intuitively with minimum parameters itself is disturbing. Moreover , the numbers were not being quoted by us only but also by many business news media and pro-corporate policy advisors like Mr. Arun (refer, Sun News TV debate ‘Vivadha Medai’ , 5th January 2014) who are all justifying your ‘restructuring’ exercise as ‘removing excess fat’ , ‘bloodletting is good for IT industry’, etc. In addition, your own H.R. Manager,  Mr.Krishnaprasad of Hyderabad TCS orally confirmed Mr. Naresh Kumar , the Deputy Commissioner of Labour Department, Renga Reddy District yesterday ( 5th January , 2015) that around 1000 were given the termination letter as per the TCS appraisal system in the past one month itself  in Hyderabad office.

 With this already existing immoral and unethical practice, if your esteemed company is going to terminate the employment of another 20,000, it would amount to a worst of its kind of human and work rights’ breach. Downsizing the existing 45,000 employee strength of ASC and AST categories in TCS to 20,000 and compensating it with less or nil experienced employees to sustain the pyramid model of business is evident from what facts and sequence of events say. But don’t you think giving away 25,000 pink slips to achieve higher profit margins and sustaining business model is nothing but illegal retrenchment?

Finally, we wish to say two things to your attention , first one is that TCSers got enraged only with your internal message as they are witnessing more terminations in contradictory to your statement. Secondly, the Forum for IT Employees will not remain a mute spectator to these inhuman practices and untrue statements.

We’ll write again to you some days later.

Thank you,
Forum for IT Employees (F.I.T.E.)