COGNIZANT EMPLOYEES UNDER PRESSURE TO RESIGN - 'IT GIANT FACES LEGAL ACTION' OVER LAYOFFS! - REPORT

A legal action has been initiated by a union of IT employees in Karnataka, after receiving complaints from workers who had lost their jobs or were subjected to layoff at Cognizant.

Karnataka State IT Employees Union (KITU) reported that various IT employees from Bengaluru, Chennai and other cities reached out to the union as they were “forcefully” made to “resign.” This complaint was registered on Thursday. “Several victimised employees approached KITU and the Union has initiated legal action against Cognizant and its management for this illegal action,” said Sooraj Nidiyanga, the Secretary of KITU.

He further added that Cognizant must take approvals from the Labour Department before executing layoffs, which was not done by the company. “Rebranding a layoff by arguing that employees voluntarily resigned, when they were, in fact, forced to resign; is also against the law. We urge all affected employees to refuse to resign even if asked to do so,” Sooraj added.

The spokesperson of Cognizant responded to this, “Performance management is a normal process across the IT industry, including Cognizant… we would like to clarify that recent third-party allegations regarding a specific number of job actions are not accurate, not based on facts, and were not announced by Cognizant.”