Pune: Fearing Job Losses In IT Sector, NITES Demands Independent Board For Welfare Of Employees

Sumit Singh
Pune, 17th June 2021: The Bank of America’s report on planned job cuts by the information technology (IT) sector is disturbing and devastating. Pune-based Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES), an organisation working to protect interests of IT employees, has appealed Maharashtra government to establish an independent board for the IT / ITES sector to protect the welfare, rights and families of employees.

NITES president Harpreet Saluja said, “The recent Bank of America (BOA) report for IT workers is nothing short of a nightmare. The Bank of America said in a report that due to automation, Indian IT companies are preparing to lay off large numbers of employees by 2022. The Bank of America said that while the pace of automation is accelerating, by 2022, domestic software companies that employ 16 million people will lay off 3 million employees.”

According to the report, the layout companies will include TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL, Tech Mahindra and Cognizant. The BOA said in a report that this would result in huge savings of 100 billion for these IT companies, most of which they spend on employee salaries. According to Nasscom, about 16 million people work in the domestic IT sector in India, of which 9 million work in low-skilled services and BPOs. As per the BOA report, 30 per cent of these 9 million people, or 3 million people, will lose their jobs primarily due to robotic process automation (RPA).

Saluja said, “The BOA report if comes true then it will have a huge impact in Maharashtra as the state accounts for more than 30 per cent of the country’s software exports. There are over 1,200 software units based in the state.”

Since April 2020, NITES has raised issues of more than 78,000 employees who faced termination, salary cuts etc in the Coronavirus disease (COVID19) pandemic.

“We have written to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray for immediate intervention of State Government to include NITES as a representative of IT / ITES employees in the Maharashtra Workers Welfare Board and to establish an independent board for IT / ITES sector to protect the welfare, rights and families of IT / ITES employees in Maharashtra”, Saluja said.

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