Telangana Government Welcomes Ivanka Trump, Hyderabad Techies Say Go Back

While the Telangana Government has been busy with face-lift activities of Hyderabad to project the city as a global capital ahead of the visit of Ivanka Trump, the retrenched techies from the city launched the “Ivanka Trump go back” campaign to mark their protest against Donald Trump’s protectionist policies.

Expressing concerns over the job losses suffered by Indian IT professionals in the US-based companies, Forum for IT Professionals has demanded that the central government and the Telangana goernment take up this issue with Ivanka Trump, advisor to the White House and daughter of US President Donald Trump, who is in Hyderabad for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2017, co-hosted by US and India.

To curtail the 'very unfair' practices of Americans, Trump had declared earlier that he would bring jobs back from China, Mexico and Japan. Expressing anguish over the jobs being “stolen” from Americans, Trump had imposed restrictions on US work visas, including H1B and L1 visas.

“Trump’s protectionist policies have impacted the job sector in India and it resulted in mass layoffs in IT companies in India”, Kiran Chandra, a member of the Forum told Newsclick. As the result of US policies, around 1,00,000 Indian IT employees have been retrenched this year alone.

“We want the centre to talk about the policies of Trump which inflict havoc on the IT professionals, with Ivanka”, Kiran Chandra added.

As the result of Trump’s reshoring project which aims to create jobs in the US itself, Infosys announced 10,000 jobs just in one state in the country.

“Tech consumption in India is high. Consider the example of US-based Amazon or IBM, they are gaining a huge amount of market in our country. Then why can’t our government seriously take labour issues to the US government and build pressure,” added Kiran Chandra, questioning the centre’s passiveness on this issue.

On the other hand, the Telangana Information Technology Association, the body whose objective is to address the labour issues, hasn’t sought any kind of intervention from the centre to take up this issue with Ivanka.

Meanwhile, Altisource Bengaluru laid off hundreds of employees on Monday. The employees were forcibly made to resign from the company. Altisource is a firm which has been making headlines for the past three years for what has been termed "their inhuman and unethical methods of layoffs".

When the employees were asked to resign, many of them did it unwillingly, fearing humiliation and termination, said the press release issued by the Karnataka State IT/ITeS Employees Union (KITU).

Extending support to the affected employees, KITU said that as per the Industrial Disputes Act 1947 section 2(a), unfair labour practices (“to indulge in acts of force or violence”) it is an offense on the part of an employer to force an employer to force an employee to resign.

According to the Industrial Disputes Act, companies that employ more than 100 employees need to obtain approval from the labour Department in order to execute layoffs. Layoffs are permitted only for specific reasons and under certain regulations defined in the Industrial Disputes Act. Many IT companies in Karnataka do not follow the norms related to layoffs.