UNITES files PIL for reduction in work hours in IT BPO Companies

There may be some respite for the Indian BPO employees. The Indian IT workforce has been unorganised so far, but there is an indian subsidiary of the Union for Information & Technology Enabled Services or called UNITES, which was formed to organise the workforce. This organisation has taken a stand to raise the voices of the Indian IT and especially the BPO employees for the double standards of the IT employers in the country.

What is the matter all about?
The matter is regarding the working hours. As per the rules, Indian Factories Act, 1948., the maximum number of hours an employees is required to work is only eight hours daily. However, as per UNITES hundreds of IT companies across the country are clearly flaunting this law and asking the individuals to works for many long hours, sometimes strethching well beyond 60 hours per week.

So what is UNITES going to do now?
UNITES has filed a PIL or Public interest litigation in defence of the employees of the IT and BPO sector. It is alleging that the 'arbitrary policy' of many Indian and multinational IT/ITeS firms in India are forcing the employees to work for well beyond the required 40 hours per week.
For e.g. in yesterday's TOI, there were reports about companies like Wipro and Infosys having a mandatory presence of more than 9 or 9.5 hours in the office. If employees fail to be there for those many hours or get short by even 15 minutes, the HR department keeps sending reminders and notices. The same is true for many other companies as well.

What is UNITES
UNITES, the country's first union in the IT-BPO sector, is affiliated to the Indian National Trade Union Congress. It claims to have around 10 per cent of the total IT-BPO workforce of 2 million as members, and said the numbers have been dramatically rising over the last two months on the back of lay-offs in the sector. The union is also part of Union Network International, which has over 16 million workers in 13 different sectors from 163 countries.

What is the stand of the IT and BPO companies
IT firms, on their part, insist that the Act is not being violated since IT workers have to work for 48 hours a week - eight hours daily for six days. However, since most IT firms have a five-day working week, they work longer hours, hence there is a clear case of misunderstanding of the act and that leads to non-uniformity about the work hours.

As per the news, due to the recent turmoil in the world markets, there have been many lay offs and many companies are using this scenario to exploit most of the employees by increasing the no. of working hours significantly. the increase of daily working hours from eight to almost 10 hours by Indian and multinational companies officially is "a double standard by the IT firms, who, on the one hand are firing people saying they are not getting enough work, and on the other hand, forcing employees to work more since they are getting more work".

He said UNITES has requested industry body Nasscom to step in to clarify the stance.

The IT sector in India was once the torchbearer of many best HR practices, including flexi-office hours.

However, the situation has changed on the back of a slowing economy. Global IT services firm Accenture, for instance, is reportedly planning to increase working hours by almost an hour with effect from January 1 next year. Infosys [Get Quote], India's second-largest IT exporter, too, has asked its employees' to strictly abide by the duty hours that the company has fixed as 9.15 hours a day on all working days. Wipro [Get Quote] also has stipulated 9.5 hours working hours a day, and is becoming much stricter in terms of timing.

Then there is the other side of the story - Companies allege that long work hours are OK as the IT employees are getting much much higher salary than their counterparts from the other sectors. So ultimately, there will be a long standing debate on the topic. Let's see what comes out from the PIL filed by UNITES.