Anilkumar T By

KOCHI: With the TCS deciding to go ahead with the lay-off at Infopark in Kakkanad, various organisations based outside of Kerala have planned to move to Kochi to protest against the company’s decision.

The Chennai-based Forum for IT Employees (FITE), an organisation formed to work for the welfare and rights of IT employees in India, has held discussions with the sacked employees at Infopark to chalk out the protest methods.

“This is a serious issue as corporates are ruining the future of IT professionals. So far we have got more than 30 complaints of termination of staff from Kochi alone. To mark our protest we will hold a black gag protest in front of the Infopark next week. We will also distribute brochures and leaflets to the techies to highlight the present situation in the company,” said Bharathi Dasan, co-ordinator of FITE, who visited the employees here on Saturday.

e-petition Collection

Meanwhile, the FITE has started an online e-petition collection from the people who got termination letter from the TCS. “We got around 3,000 e-petitions from the techies and all this happened within two days. We hope that the numbers will be more than ten times by the next fiscal,” Bharathi said.

Besides, the forum also started a Facebook page with the name ‘We are against TCS layoff’ and it is getting a warm response from the people. Within days of opening, the page recorded nearly 6,000 likes and it is getting more than 5 lakh views daily, they claimed.

P Parimala, a co-ordinator of the forum, said that they would consult legal experts and file a case against TCS challenging the ‘lay-offs’. “As of now the company has not revealed the exact figure of terminations and how many they intend to fire. We will meet the Prime Minister and the Union Labour Minister to discuss the matter,” she said.

Meanwhile New Democratic Labour Front (NDLF), a Chennai-based Marxist-Leninist trade union organisation is planning to organise protest against the IT giant’s decision to sack the employees.

“We will organise a protest in Kochi against the TCS move. The TCS is going to sack 25,000 to 30,000 employees in the next few months, mainly senior professionals and hire freshers which is unacceptable,” said Vinod Kumar, a leader of NDLF.

A TCS spokesperson said the firm is a performance-driven company. “Workforce optimisation is a continuous process which happens throughout the year taking into account employee performance, business needs and people’s aspirations.” “We are not into any lay-off here. We are just terminating the people who are ‘non-performers.’ In this fiscal, we have a total hiring target of 55,000 professionals and we are on track to meet it,” spokesperson said.