IT employee union Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) have reportedly written a letter to Minister of Labor and Employment, Bhupender Yadav against the Software major Infosys. The employees alleged that Infosys has an ‘illegal’ clause in their agreements which bans them from working for the same clients even when the employee leaves the job and works at a rival IT company.
As per the clause, Infosys has asked employees to sign a non-compete which bans employees from working for the same customer in rival firms such as TCS, Accent, IBM, Cognizant, and Wipro etc. The clause is allegedly illegal as it violates Section 27 of the Contract Act, said Harpreet Saluja, President, NITES said in a letter.
The letter addressed to the Minister of Labor and Employment, Bhupender Yadav said that Infosys imposed the non-compete clause that bans the employees to work for the same customers with whom they had worked with at the company for the last 12 months. They can not work with those customers in the above-mentioned rival firms for six months after quitting Infosys. Further, it prohibits them to work for those clients itself.
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For the period of six months after leaving Infosys, employees will not accept any offer of employment from any customer, (with whom the employee has worked) in the 12 months immediately preceding termination, as per the clause.
The letter added that these clauses are unduly harsh and aggressive and are likely to affect the employee’s livelihood. “Hence the company should be stopped from enforcing it,” the letter added.
Infosys has claimed it is a standard practice and fully disclosed to the employees before they join the company. “It is standard business practice in many parts of the world for employment contracts to include controls of reasonable scope and duration to protect the confidentiality of information, customer connections, and other legitimate business interests. These are fully disclosed to all job aspirants before they decide to join Infosys, and do not have the effect of preventing employees from joining other organizations for career growth and aspirations,” Infosys said in a statement.
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Meanwhile, the Infosys has declared their Q4 earnings where the company reported profits of Rs 5,686 crore as of March 31. The company had hired a total of 54,396 employees in the past year, It aims to hire over 50,000 freshers this year. This comes at a time when attrition has spiked for Infosys, amid a surprising new war for tech talent in the country. The attrition stood at 27.7 per cent, Infosys CEO Salil Parekh said.
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