Labour union condemns LTIMindtree making training course, tests mandatory for select freshers awaiting Onboarding
Contents News/Article Date: 3rd April 2023
Relating to which Act: The Indian Constitution grants the Central and state governments the powers to enact laws to protect the employees and foster a professional work environment. Based on the industry, nature of the work, number of employees in the company, location, and more, there are various legislations like the Industrial Disputes Act 1947 (ID Act), Factories Act 1948 (Factories Act), and Shops and Establishment Acts in relevant states (S&E Act).
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Type: ET News report
Pertains to: Establishments and Employees in all types of Organizations running businesses for profit or nonprofit
Relevance of this news: Karma Global is in the business of HR Services, Payroll, Outsourcing, and Regulatory Compliances right from its inception in 2004 since then, has brought in a lot of efficiencies and technological upgradations with experts on its role, to ease the hassles of Payroll Processing, Temp Staffing, On-boarding, Employee Life Cycle, Statutory, Regulatory, and Payroll compliances by providing customized solutions to all its elite clients.
Now Karma Global is also fully in labour compliance for nearly 18 years and is helping both establishments and workers for the fulfillment of obligations as per the laws of the land. It has over 200 staff, both direct and indirect on its rolls and operates on Pan India basis. Recently, it has diversified into foreign shores as well, into countries like the US, UK, UAE, Canada, and South East Asia for handling payroll, outsourcing, recruitment, compliance, and governance.
Karma Global handles the obligations of all provisions contained in the labour acts and rules. Employees are entitled to several benefits under the Employment Act, including annual paid leave, sick leave, maternity benefits, paid public holidays, etc. Employers must ensure that they meet all of the Act’s standards and that the contract conditions reflect this.
Businesses must comply with the following requirements of the Act in particular:
- Minimum wage
- Maternity benefits
- Revision of wages
- Safer work environment
- Adaptive work culture
- Issuance of employment contracts
- Social contributions
- Health care and insurance
- Holidays and annual leave
- Termination, severance pay, grievance handling, redressal
And in this instance: A labour union of IT Employees has expressed concerns over IT firm LTI Mind Tree making its IGNITE training programme and assessment tests mandatory for select freshers awaiting onboarding in order to keep their current offers valid.
Pune-based IT union Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) issued a statement condemning the action by LTIMindtree calling it “unethical tactics”.
We have received complaints that the company is about to remove freshers who have been awaiting their joining date for more than a year under the pretext of a new training programme called IGNITE. Around 700-800 candidates have received such mails,” said Harpreet Saluja, president of NITES. The emails were sent to main freshers who were offered jobs by erstwhile Mindtree. The merger of LTI and Mindtree came into effect in November last year.
Subject: Labour union condemns LTIMindtree making training course, tests mandatory for select freshers awaiting onboarding
Appended is the complete news item
Source: ET News report
Labour union condemns LTIMindtree making training course, tests mandatory for select freshers awaiting onboarding
Labour union condemns LTI Mindtree making training course, tests mandatory for select freshers awaiting onboarding
Pune-based IT union Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) issued a statement condemning the action by LTI Mindtree calling it “unethical tactics”.
LTI employees the company had sent offer letters to these freshers for training and employment in January 2022. However, instead of providing them with an onboarding date, the company has now introduced a learning and training programme with a duration of 6-7 weeks
A labour union has expressed concerns over IT firms making its IGNITE training programme and assessment tests mandatory for select freshers awaiting onboarding in order to keep their current offers valid.
Pune-based IT union Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) issued a statement condemning the action by LTI Mindtree calling it “unethical tactics”.
“We have received complaints that the company is about to remove freshers who have been awaiting their joining date for more than a year under the pretext of a new training programme called IGNITE. Around 700-800 candidates have received such mails,” said Harpreet Saluja, president of NITES. The mails were sent to mainly freshers who were offered jobs by erstwhile Mindtree. The merger of and Mindtree came into effect in November last year.
In response to ET’s request for a comment, the company said it is in the silent period ahead of the earnings announcement on April 27 and hence will not be commenting on the matter.
ET has reviewed a copy of the email sent by LTI Mindtree.
The company sent offer letters to these freshers for training and employment in January 2022. However, instead of providing them with an onboarding date, the company has now introduced a learning and training programme with a duration of 6-7 weeks, the union said. The freshers have been given two options—to undergo this assessment-based training or have their earlier offer automatically canceled, it added.
Certain freshers, mainly those who were given offers by erstwhile Mindtree, will be required to undergo 6-7 weeks of self-paced training with 20% of instructor-led training (ILT) with day, week, and milestone-based assessments, the email said. Also, under a proctored assessment framework, the milestone-based assessments score will be multiple-choice questions (MCQ) with 40% weightage, and coding assignments will have 60% weightage. Two attempts will be given to clear each milestone assessment, the mail added.
“Students with 60% or above in all three milestones will be considered to be successful in the IGNITE programme and will be considered for onboarding in batches based on business demand,” it added.
The Mumbai-headquartered firm has also instructed the freshers to accept the option by next week otherwise a “No” or not giving a response will mean the offer of training and subsequent employment earlier made to you will stand auto-canceled.
This comes as some engineering graduates of batches 2022 and even 2021 are yet to be onboarded by IT services companies, which are marred by a demand slowdown. Labour unions told ET earlier that the numbers could be in the thousands and the issue is more acute in certain companies. Some candidates have taken to Twitter to highlight their woes. Most companies, however, said all the offers made to campus hires will be honored.
ET had also earlier reported that the tapering of post-pandemic demand surge and also the cooling off of attrition metrics at Indian IT firms are resulting in fewer campus offers at colleges for 2023 batch graduates. It is up to 30% lower in certain colleges.
