Bpo Employees Being Sacked
Thirty-eight employees of a BPO were sacked, making it one of the biggest instances of retrenchment in the IT hub of Salt Lake’s Sector V.
The employees were reportedly asked to leave soon after they came to office in the morning. The workers went into a huddle and then started demonstrating first inside the office and then on the road outside. After a daylong stir, the management called the group inside around 9.30 pm night only to be given two options. Leave with a month’s salary, or stay on but without any guarantee of being retained.
The sacked employees claimed that the BPO had a staff strength of 300 in 2006. The number of employees was gradually reduced to bring it down to 85, but never before have 38 workers been asked to leave on the same day. There were rumours that 20 more would be shown the door.
When they were asked to leave in the morning, the retrenched employees blocked the road. They paid little heed to requests by senior police officers to allow traffic movement. This continued till the evening.
Bharat BPO is a joint venture of B K Modi Group’s Omnia BPO and Spanco Telesystems. It was created primarily to aid Indian Railways users. Senior officials of the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), for which the BPO works, could not shed light on why the company was getting rid of nearly half of its staff when the number of passengers using helpline services have actually gone up.
Senior officials of Bharat BPO could not be reached for comment till late at night.
“We were given no prior notice. Our employers should realize how bad it feels to be told to leave after one reports for work in the morning,” said Narayan Das, a sacked’ employee. Sensing an opportunity, leaders of the CITU’s Sector-V Employees’ Union reached the spot and joined the demonstration. Source