Season of layoffs

For years,Tirupur kept its date with major global sporting events where T-shirts and jerseys knitted in the Tamil Nadu hosiery town catered to tens of thousands of sports fans. At the Euro 2012 soccer championship,though,Tirupur was missing from the action.

Graduating to unemployment

We got orders for Euro T-shirts this year too but could not accept them because of the pricing and shortage of labour. The orders went to Bangladesh and Pakistan, says C Udhaya Shankar of Sree Santhosh Garments.

The towns 5,000 units with 2 lakh workers had emerged an international garment manufacturing hub over the last decade but the global slowdown,soaring yarn prices and the closure of 500 polluting dyeing units following a court order last year have dealt it a blow.

According to an official estimate,25,000 families of migrant workers have returned home,over 100 textile units have shut and so have many restaurants. To let boards dangle outside houses,realty prices have plunged and state-owned liquor shops are struggling.

Exporters now send yarn to north India and Karnataka for dyeing,delaying supply to importers. And most global garment orders now go to Bangladesh and Pakistan because of lower wages and import duty concessions.

G Gowtham,a tailor,is planning to return to his village in southern Tamil Nadu. I have not done a full days work for four months, he says. His wages for stitching a collar have been halved from 50 paisa; his weekly earnings have dropped to Rs 1,000 from Rs 2,500. I used to stitch at least 800 pieces a day. Now I am lucky if I get 250, he says.

RADHA VENKATESAN

Mumbai
Financial flu

The combination of a weak economy,the global slowdown and underperforming equity markets has begun to spell trouble in the financial capital. The link between stock market performance and jobs in the banking,asset management,investment banking,broking and insurance business sectors has forced financial firms to cut costs,increase efficiency,and enforce layoffs.

Some foreign broking firms have already done one or two rounds of layoffs. In our case we are not filling up places vacated by people, said anofficial with a global financial services firm.

The fall in institutional business,decline in market value of investments,rupee depreciation and reduction in commissions have hit investment banks and foreign brokerage firms. A source close to developments in investment banking and securities firm Goldman Sachs said it had reduced its headcount in the broking business. A company spokesperson said headcounts had risen 30 per cent over the last year and been constant for six months,but refused to give details for broking and investment banking.

Dinesh Thakkar of domestic broker Angel Broking said the company has been working to cut costs and reduced the number of branches and employees by around 5 per cent.

SANDEEP SINGH

Pune
Reverse gear

ITS not even six months since Yuvraj Yadav was hired as a quality control engineer by a Chinese heavy duty vehicles manufacturer at Chakan,outside Pune,and the 26-year-old is now serving his notice period till the end of July. Laid off due to falling demand,he is yet to find a new job.

Suhas Nikam,a mechanical engineer who worked in a large auto company,quit in April to write the civil services exam. He is now struggling to get back into the industry.

Industry officials in Pune,one of the countrys main auto hubs,estimate that at least 8,000 people have lost their jobs in the sector in 2012 amid a slowdown in Indias auto sales. They include not only engineers but also temporary and casual workers. Pune is home to more than 10,000 auto and auto-component companies that employ about 2 lakh. Although the jobs lost represent only 4 per cent of the total,the sheer numbers are staggering; analysts say it could have been worse had some companies not shuffled workers between units.

Praditi Pressparts,a small auto firm,has reduced its temporary workers by 10 per cent and not fired permanent staff,says Deepak Karandikar,its MD. The sector is now pinning its hopes on a good monsoon and the Diwali season,which traditionally push sales.

ISHFAQ NASEEM

Adityapur
Spoke in wheel

Taking the Jamshedpur-Barbil passenger train out of Adityapur in the evening has been much less of an ordeal for about two months now. Between 6,000 and 15,000 people are estimated to have lost their jobs in this industrial area in Jharkhand.

Adityapur has more than 1,000 units,most of them supplying ancillaries to construction equipment and auto manufacturing industries in Jamshedpur. The slowdown has hit Tata Motors and in turn Adityapur. The Tata Motors plant is running at 50 per cent of its capacity. As a result,most of us have discarded two shifts and are operating only one, said R K Sinha,president,Adityapur Small Industries Association.

Sinha estimates 300 units are on the verge of closing down. These are the smallest ones,too small to take direct orders from Tata. The bigger companies outsource their orders to them. Now that demand is lower,the bigger players are processing all orders themselves.

Sinha estimates about 15,000 people have lost their jobs. Deepak Singh,head of CIIs Jamshedpur zonal office,puts it at 6,000. The CII has viewed this as a temporary national slowdown caused by the devaluation of the rupee and rise in petrol prices. The automobile sector is badly hit, he said.

DEEPU SEBASTIAN EDMOND

Keonjhar-Jajpur
In the pits

The mining and metals sector was supposed to be Orissas ticket to becoming an economic powerhouse in eastern India. But due to local resistance to land acquisition for industries,delays in supply of iron ore and bauxite,and delays in coal linkage to power companies,combined with economic uncertainty,the growth story has gone cold.

The mining scam of 2009 too has hit the industry. Amid a government crackdown,only 115 mining leases of 600 granted are operating,with the rest suspended or temporarily discontinued.

Rajib Lochan Mohanty,president of the Eastern Zonal Mining Association of mine owners,says only workers and semi-skilled people may have lost their jobs. But if things dont improve soon,then lots of people will surely lose jobs in the coming year, said Mohanty.

The Keonjhar Mines and Forest Workers Union claimed the closure of the state-owned Orissa Mining Corporation in Keonjhar could have led to the retrenchment of thousands of labourers while over 1,200 lost their jobs after the Orissa Mineral Development Corporation shut down just one mine.

Dr Mukesh Kumar,president and COO,Vedanta Aluminium Ltd,said it had slowed the absorption of recruits hired last year. Last year,we planned to recruit 300-4008230; we have been delaying the appointments as our plants are working below capacity. This year we have not recruited anyone.

DEBABRATA MOHANTY

Bangalore
Transition pain

Being told that you are being transitioned even when you are prepared for it and have another job in hand is a painful thing. In a sense it means that all the hard work you put in was not valued by the company, says a senior technical manager at a global internet firm. His job was among the 40-60 cut by the company in India in April as part of a worldwide target of 2,000.

With the company in a phase where functions were merged and redundant ones removed,it was the quality assurance teams,project managers and product management teams whose jobs were found redundant. The firm chose to transition them out over varying periods depending on seniority and quality. Many are yet to find new jobs.

Such IT job losses,however,are an exception in India and its tech capital. While there have been announcements by tech companies of job cuts the world over,no major cuts have happened in India. HP,which announced a cut of 27,000 staff,is yet to implement it here.

Another tech company laying off people is Nokia. It is set to cut around 300 of 1,500 Ramp;D jobs but will outsource 500 new jobs. Those being laid off have been given severance packages.

We have not really heard of major layoffs over the last year in the IT sector. There is a slowdown in hiring. This year is going to be slow hiring year for at least two quarters. Hiring will be at least 10-15 per cent down, said Sangeeta Lala,co-founder and vice president at HR firm TeamLease Services.

JOHNSON T A

Tomorrow: Graduating to unemployment

Ins amp; outs

Quarter to quarter,how workforce has changed in various industries

Vertical coordinates are for jobs added/lost in thousand since March 2011

March 2011 is benchmark 0; changes in employment from one quarter to the next again in thousand are marked on the graphs