Two days ago 200 Verizon employees were escorted out of the office in Chennai by guards
Two days after 200 employees of IT major Verizon were escorted out of their office in Chennai by guards, another 700 are being laid from its facilities in India, claims a union that represents techies.
Verizon has 7,000 employees in India at offices in Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. In an email to NDTV, the company did not comment on how many people are being pink-slipped. It chose to describe the retrenchment as "role rationalisation not to meet a specific number but to match the talent with the requirements of the business for its future".
The company also said it is offering "a good compensation package" including extended medical insurance, counselling and even out placement services to those being laid off. Verizon also claimed that many employees chose to exit the company to avail of the severance package.
The $150 billion IT sector in India has been flung into churn on account automation and curbs on US work visas, which has seriously hit the foreign business and contracts of companies like Infosys. McKinsey & Co says almost half of the four million people working in India's IT services industry will become "irrelevant" in the next three to four years,
reported Bloomberg this week.
The Union of IT & ITES Employees in a statement calls this "against labour laws that govern the region of Tamilnadu".