IT employees union alleges bench staff layoffs in Cognizant
IT employee unions have alleged that IT company Cognizant will lay off thousands of such employees in India. The union of IT employees in Karnataka and Chennai said that a total of 18,000 employees at Cognizant are on the bench. Most of these can be affected. Many employees have also threatened to go to court in this regard.
State IT staff unions in Karnataka and Chennai have alleged that Cognizant is massively retrenching employees across India. The Karnataka State IT / ITES Employees Union (KITU) has strongly condemned the decision taken by Cognizant’s management.
All India Forum for IT Employee (AIFITE) General Secretary AJ Vinod said that the company has laid off large number of employees from Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Kochi, Chennai and Kolkata offices. Although how many employees have been retrenched so far, the information about it has not been clear.
AIFITE told the Labor Department and the government that about 18 thousand employees have no project. In such a situation, job loss fear has increased. The CEO of the company, Brian Humphries, announced in October 2019 that the company will lay off 13 thousand employees from all over the world.
During that time the company had said that 6 thousand of these employees would be from content moderation business, which the company does for Facebook. At the same time, the company also said that 5 thousand employees should be re-skilled and hired again. Cognizant company has about 2.9 lakh employees worldwide. Of these, 70 percent (more than 2 lakh) work in India.
