‘Stop All Layoffs’: NITES Urges Labour Minister to Intervene in TCS’s 12,000 Job Cuts
‘Stop All Layoffs’: NITES Urges Labour Minister to Intervene in TCS’s 12,000 Job Cuts
India’s largest IT services firm, Tata Consultancy Services, under fire as unions call mass terminations unethical, illegal, and a threat to job security norms.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s leading IT services firm, is facing a formal complaint from the Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) after confirming plans to lay off nearly 12,000 permanent employees in what is set to become the biggest workforce reduction in the Indian IT industry’s history.
The internal announcement was circulated via email on Sunday evening, sparking widespread outrage among employees and unions alike. The layoffs account for approximately 2% of the company’s workforce and mark TCS’s most significant retrenchment exercise to date, surpassing the 3,000 job cuts carried out in 2015.
NITES has written to Union Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, expressing strong concerns over the legality and ethics of the move. “This mass layoff is not only unethical and inhumane; it is outright illegal,” said Harpreet Singh Saluja, President of NITES. “TCS has planned to terminate thousands of employees without giving them due notice or any prior intimation to the government, all of which are mandatory under existing Indian labour laws.”
The complaint alleges that the layoffs disproportionately affect mid to senior-level professionals with 10–20 years of service, many of whom received no prior warning. The timing of the announcement, late on a Sunday has also drawn criticism, with unions accusing the company of bypassing formal communication protocols.
Saluja warned that allowing a company of TCS’s scale to proceed with mass terminations without accountability would set a dangerous precedent across India’s employment landscape. “It will normalize job insecurity, erode employee rights, and severely damage trust in India’s employment ecosystem,” he said.
The union also pointed to a growing gap between executive pay and employee treatment. TCS’s FY25 annual report reveals CEO K Krithivasan received a total compensation of ₹26.5 crore—329.8 times the median employee salar marking a 4.6% hike from the previous year, even as job cuts loomed.
In addition to halting terminations and reinstating affected staff, NITES has urged the Labour Ministry to investigate TCS’s delayed onboarding of over 600 lateral hires, a matter the union had previously flagged.
Other trade unions have echoed similar concerns. The Karnataka State IT/ITeS Employees Union urged TCS to revoke its decision and reinstate employees, while the Forum for IT Employees (FITE) advised the company to provide severance pay, a formal notice period, and extended health coverage for up to a year. They also called on TCS to refrain from exerting pressure on employees to resign.
As scrutiny intensifies, all eyes are now on the Labour Ministry’s response to what could be a defining moment for employment rights in India’s IT sector.
