Trade unions in IT industry

Trade unions represent association of employees for the purpose of Social securities, securing improvements in pay, benefits, working conditions etc through collective bargaining. There cannot be any industry which can suppress trade union formation activities and show disrespect to the labour laws. It is actually through collective bargaining that individuals stand to gain much more than they would gain, if left to themselves and hence Trade Unions plays significant role. Employees working in the IT industry by Bhartiya Kamgar Sena (BKS) were asked via mail by that if the presence of organized trade unions in the industry would provide employees a better bargain about work- related issues. The sample includes employees from software companies having annual revenue of more than Rs.400+ crores 1200 professionally qualified male and female employees working in the industry in the age group of 20-35 years from six prime geographical locations viz. Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, and Chennai were the targeted respondents. The survey was conducted in the year 2016-20107 where out of the 1200 employees, 939 responded back, so the actual sample size was of 939 employees. A gigantic 73 % of the employees who participated in the survey were in favour of organized trade unions specially from South region. They were confident that organized trade unions in IT industry would provide employees a better bargain in work related issues.

To conclude that most of the employees irrespective of gender welcome the suggestion of trade unions in the IT industry. Majorly to address the concerns related to their job security and work environment; along with economic concerns were expected from IT industry gearing for unionisation. Different responses given by IT employees when asked to validate their opinion for organized trade unions have been summarized and grouped below:

Work Load: Employees are continuously pressurized by their superiors for more output so that the organisation can maximize their profits.

Job Insecurity: Employees in the industry are not secured about their jobs, many a times the organisation has liberty to fire employees on insubstantial grounds without giving due proper notice. Employees concern about being given pink slip but feel totally helpless in such cases.

Appraisal & Promotion Issues: Inspite of the methods like 360 degree and Management by objective (MBO) for performance appraisal, most of the organisation lack maturity in HR processes to adopt such type of robust appraisal approach. It is observed that the entire appraisal of an employee is handled by the immediate manager which generates disgruntlement in the employee with no proper solution. Also it is observed that many deserving employees are overlooked during the promotion process.

Non recognition of Extra Efforts: Extra efforts by employees in the organisation are not accounted for and compensated given to the employees in lieu of that.

Lack of impartial & transparency: Organizational culture is spoiled due to lack of impartial & transparency as equal opportunities are not provided to all the employees. Some of the employees are even harassed at times and unfortunate employees are forced to quit.

Denial of Annual Leaves: Another major problem in most of the IT companies is that employees are not given annual leave although they are available on paper and mentioned in appointment letter/contract. Even it can be seen that normally an employee is not given leave for more than 1-2 weeks yearly in spite of pending leaves. This means that an employee cannot take a long break to de-stress himself/ herself.

High Stress Levels: These jobs are very stressful leading to mental exhaustion and over-worked employees are unable to strike appropriate work-life balance. It is observed that in other industries, people are able to achieve work-life balance because they are not over worked and employers have a fear from organised trade unions.

Long Working Hours: Many of the organisation are going against the weekly working hours norm set by International Labour Organization (ILO). Employees working in the industry are forced to work for extra hours as superiors pressurize their subordinates in the name of shrinking deadline of projects.

Recently The labour commission of Karnataka, in Bengaluru, has certified the formation of the Karnataka State IT/ITES Employees Union (KITU) under the Trade Union Act, 1926, and Karnataka Trade Unions Regulations, 1958.