It's not a very happy start to the New Year for over 1,500 odd employees working in Tech giant Tata Consultancy Services​ (TCS) who have been reportedly served the pink slip.

Stung by the decision, laid off employees of TCS have now decided to start an online campaign and give a mass petition to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to stop the 'wrongful terminations'. Led by a newly formed Federation of IT Employees [FITE] of Chennai, employees are strengthening the protest against the unexpected terminations.

A big player in the $110 billion Indian IT industry, the lay offs have reportedly been made in order to bring in reforms and cost-cutting despite the 17% growth the company registered in the first half of this fiscal. So far, according to reports, 470 in Bengaluru, 700 in Hyderabad, 480 in Chennai, 70 in Pune and 20 in Kochi have been handed the pink slip.

TCS employs over 3,00,000 in its global workforce. They have been a hope to the engineering education sector, providing students with jobs and hefty salaries. TCS had announced that they will hire 55,000 new recruits in the current fiscal. Their attrition rate has been about 12%, including involuntary attrition.

Social media has been abuzz about the alleged mass lay offs with rumours about the company planning to sack about 25,000 'non-performers' by the end of February 2015. Meanwhile, TCS says that there is nothing extraordinary about the pink slips being handed out.

Possible reasons behind the lay offs

According to industry experts, one of the reasons the retrenchments have been made is to bring in new talent with fresh skills and perspective. Plus, new recruits cost a lot less than employees with some experience. Also, experienced employees, who are not learning new skills and thus cannot be inducted in to leadership or project management roles, add no new value.

This is not the situation at just TCS. Most IT companies require coding as a basic skill which needs to be updated with time. Employees who fail to run with the wind are seen as a cost burden to the company. Then there are issues with the hierarchy as well. If an employee does well, he/she quickly hits the ceiling as there are not many senior positions to absorb this talent.

Outrage

It is expected of employers to notify the Labour Department of the lay offs which TCS never did. The IT sector does not fall under the Industrial Employment Act. That leaves laid off employees in the same category as other unrecognised labourers in the country. This also keeps them out of legal protection against unjustified termination. Also, long work-hours, lack of a redress mechanism and stagnation, are other issues that employees can't do anything about due to the fear of being blacklisted.