HC admits petition of sacked Tech Mahindra employees over unceremonious exits

Job loss | The pandemic has wreaked havoc on the job landscape in India. According the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) about 21 million salaries employees lost their jobs during April-August. There were 86 million salaried jobs in India during 2019-20. In August 2020, the count was down to 65 million after 3.3 million jobs were gone in the particular month, mostly among the industrial workers and white collar workers, as per the CMIE. (Image: Shutterstock)

The High Court of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh on Monday admitted a writ petition from sacked employees of Tech Mahindra, who took the company and the Telangana government to court for asking them to quit unceremoniously.

The writ petition came after four retrenched employees claimed they were terminated unlawfully as they were in mediation with the company and labour commissioner over the manner of retrenchment.

According to the Forum of IT Professionals (ForIT), an organisation working for the welfare of IT professional since 2007 in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Justice MS Ramachandra Rao admitted the writ petition filed by four retrenched employees.

Moneycontrol has seen a copy of the writ petition.

Justice Rao on Monday issued notices to Principal Secretary, Labour and Employment Department, Government of Telangana, Joint Commissioner of Labour, and Tech Mahindra, directing them to give their responses within three weeks.

He also permitted the petitioners to serve personal notices to Tech Mahindra in this regard.

Tech Mahindra could not be immediately reached for comment.

Senior Counsel A Satyaprasad, who represented the four petitioners, informed the Court that Tech Mahindra was resorting to large scale illegal retrenchment of employees in Hyderabad, pointing out that the human resources department of the company was pressurising the employees to put in their resignations and leave the company.

Moneycontrol was the first to report last week the story of a 6:45-minute long audio clip uploaded by a Tech Mahindra employee, where an HR executive was heard asking him put in his papers by 10 am the next day or his services at the company would be terminated.

The report led to apologies from Mahindra Group’s executive chairman Anand Mahindra and CEO CP Gurnani on Friday over the manner of sacking.

In this case, the four petitioners had complained to the Joint Commissioner of Labour of Telangana, Ranga Reddy, against the “high handed illegal methods” being adopted by the company, according to ForIT.

Even as Reddy initiated conciliation proceedings to resolve this issue, Tech Mahindra handed out termination letters to the four employees.

This action, according to the Counsel Satyaprasad, violates Section 47(2) of Telangana Shops and Establishments Act. According to the prevailing law (Telangana Shops and Establishments Act, 1988), no employee can be terminated if there is a pending petition with the Labour Commissioner.

According to ForIT, more than 80 petitions have been filed with the Labour Commissioner’s office and with the Development Commissioner’s office, Special Economic Zone, by employees laid off from various IT companies.

In this case, two conciliatory meetings were held between the retrenched employees and Tach Mahindra on June 12 and June 30. A third meeting was to take place on July 7 but has been postponed to July 14.

“ForIT expresses its happiness that the High Court has taken cognizance of the IT retrenchments by admitting this writ petition. Issuing notices to Tech Mahindra is a positive development. We, the IT employees, need to realise that there are laws that protect our livelihoods, and we should fight to retain those rights,” the Forum said in a statement.