Opinion Byju’s and the great retrenchment that wasn’t: Why IT workers’ action in Kerala is significant

At this juncture, when the organisation of workers in service sector jobs is at an all-time low, Byju’s story demands special attention. It offers a model for nurturing solidarity among vulnerable and unprotected employees in the new service economy.

By now, it is widely understood that the IT sector in India is a breeding ground for precarious employment. The work is very demanding. With an effective blending of HR strategies and technology-aided controls, IT workers are made to work continuously to attain their ever-rising job targets and productivity standards. Employment insecurity in terms of tenure and lack of permanency has become a perennial feature of tech-based service sector jobs. Income inequality in the new-economy occupations is so wide that one needs to multiply the salary of the bottom-level worker by at least a three-digit number to arrive at a rough estimate of the CEO’s remuneration. Barring certain perks provided to these highly mobile and dispensable employees, there are few social security provisions (which bind the employer with long-term commitments to the repatriated staff).

In a situation where all the firms are in a continuous rat race to increase production and cut costs, the axes of austerity measures and “right”-sizing invariably fall on the employees at the base of the workforce pyramid. New developments in work organisation such as outsourcing, off-shoring, platform mediations (gig work) and synchronised engagement of robots, artificial intelligence and big data are also speeding up the “race to the bottom” in terms of labour standards.

As the Damocles’ sword of retrenchment hangs in the air, it is hard for the workers to even think about socialising in ways not desired by the management, let alone organising under labour unions. Empirical evidence shows that those who are engaged in activities such as collectivisation and mobilisation of colleagues are penalised in many ways including forced retrenchments, transfers, denial of promotion, denial of opportunities in terms of visits abroad and skill upgradation.

Often, workers in these modern, tech-savvy occupations attach a misconstrued identity of “professionals” to themselves, which inter alia deters them from organising under the flag of trade unions. Such a scenario coupled with the “caring style” of human resource management followed in new-economy firms will even prompt the employees to consider unionisation as an undesirable and negative act. Even for those who are frustrated with their workplace, joining another job and leaving behind the extant troubles seems to be more feasible and practical than getting into organised collective action within a firm. The relatively high rates of attrition and share of transit/mobile labour in these firms attest, to some extent, to this attitude of employees.

Given this scenario, any spurt in workers’ collective action and resistance is a ray of hope for the thousands of informed but insecure employees in IT firms and other knowledge-based digital labour.

Coming back to the Byju’s story, the proactive and prompt involvement of the state government is an encouraging sign, which needs to be underlined. The fact that the labour minister and departments as well as the chief minister himself swiftly intervened to protect the interests of affected employees is a welcome signal. It creates a replicable prototype for other state governments to effectively address and intervene in similar issues concerning vulnerable labour. Such involvement is crucial in a scenario where the framework of labour protection under the hitherto applicable labour laws is in a status of limbo, with the introduction of new labour codes, the efficacy of which is yet to be tested on the ground.

The writer is Professor of Development Studies and Dean, Research and Consultancy, at Ambedkar University Delhi