 Hello and welcome to news clip. A case of sexual harassment at workplace was reported by a Tata consultancy services employee in 2018, while in deputation to the United Kingdom. This heartened to the internal complaints committee report on the case. She appealed against it in the labor court in Kanjipuram. And the case is under procedure. Recently, the union of IT employees, known as Unite, released a statement saying the management is extending passive support to the accused. To talk about it, we have with us general secretary of the union of IT employees, Alaganambi Velkan. Thank you, thanks very much for joining us. Can you begin by telling us what exactly is the appeal against the TCS's internal complaints committee? What is the accusation against the ICC? So the case has been running for almost three plus years. And the incident happened almost four years before. So almost an year TCS took to investigate this case internally using this ICC committee. And they used multiple methods, which are not in the guidelines, which are against the guidelines of ICC. That created a lot of mental pressure on the affected employee. And they finally concluded by saying that this affected employee is mentally not stable. So we are canceling this ICC complaint. So the challenge of the appeal against ICC report is that the action of the ICC, the violation of the ICC, led to this mental stress because of which the ICC illegally closed that case. So the appeal is against challenging the case and challenging the ICC report. So TCS is continuously pursuing to state that the decision was what they took by their ICC is right. And they are standing by their decision. And our unions, multiple unions, multiple social organizations, in support of the victim are trying to challenge that and trying to bring justice to the affected party. So how has the court proceeding been so far in, as a new statement by the Unite has said that the administration is extending passive support to the accused? Is that the case? As I told, the case is going on almost for three years. And in the three years, the TCS has consistently taken a stand that whatever they decided is right. They are not getting into a position where a complaint came in. So they want to take or hear both these sites and take a right ethical decision. But instead of that, they want to safeguard certain people in the management. And by the way, they are trying to defend the decisions which they purposefully told that employees are psychologically unfit to file a case, or because of which she has filed a case. And moreover, the TCS also maintains that this employee has filed this case because of the performance appraisal rating which this employee has got in recent times during the when she filed the case. But as we all know, and the union is consistently accusing that the performance appraisal process is a black box. There is no transfer mechanism. All the ratings are all arbitrary. And it is taken without any factual data into consideration because of which the decisions are subjective. And challenging this performance appraisal decisions are all legally valid. At the same time, quoting that for an ICC, which is a harassment case, and trying to picture the victim as somebody to gain some benefit out of this case is something fundamentally wrong with the ICC committee in TCS. And the TCS is continuously maintaining that stand, even in the court. They have multiple times denied to file a report. They are trying to buy time by getting vah-da-vah-da-vah-da and they are trying to move the delay the case as much as possible. Their strategy is to delay as much as possible so that the victim itself will drop the case, citing that no justice will come to them, come to the victim. So that is the situation right now. Even for the leaves which the employer should provide for a victim to attend a case, which are given by the law, is not provided to the employee. So sometimes on permissions, sometimes on the work from home situation, the employee is working in the court, sometimes on unpaid leave, on the loss of pay, the affected employee is attending the case. So this is the situation on which the case is going. And this is how they are favoring the accused. So now we were talking about TCS and a harassment case in TCS. But what about other big IT companies? Is it also rampant in a lot of places? What are some of the common complaints that Unite has received in the recent past? The sexual harassment complaints, they are very prevalent in IT companies. Though there is a general picture that it's a modern company, a modern industry, and people are well educated, the harassment specifically on women is still predominant. And though there are a number of complaints filed on the ICC against harassment, there are very few which gets justice. Because the ICC, Internal Complaints Committee itself, not constituted on basis of the guideline. There should be some activists in it. But what the companies are doing is they are bringing in an NGO who basically are the outsourced entity of this ICC cell. So they prepare documentations, they give you a report, they give you a training. So they give you a package to the MNC saying that, see, I take care of all your ICC problems. You don't need to worry about that. That is completely against the ICC, the point of having an ICC. People or the employees should be trained, should be created awareness. But it's all just a single video or a few question and answer based awareness session, which happens yearly once. It's not an ongoing process. A few examples I could code which came to the union recently are, one, there's Ascension in Chennai. They have huge data entry processing unit which employs outsourced company employees into Ascension. And these companies, the Ascension managers are denying resignations. So resignation, by legal terms, there is no mechanism to deny. The resignation is a notice. But these companies assume that these employees are their slaves and they demand that only if they approve, an employee can resign the job. So when a female employee sent a notice of resignation, this Ascensioner who's not even a direct employee of the person has denied the resignation and has told, even if it is your marriage, you need to give me proof. And even if it is a marriage, work till the marriage day and only then I can think of relieving you. So it's complete, it's also an harassment. It's a form of harassment, which is not physical in nature, but it is mental and the prevailing idea is sexual harassment are generally physical and advancing of physically advancing. But even these kind of denying opportunity or enforcing certain decisions on top of people based on gender can be also considered as harassment. So Ascensioner is one reason. And second, the Zoho company where the Zoho, one of the Tamil Nadu's famous company and termed as the unicorn of India as well. So that company is, we are hearing multiple reports saying that the employees are women, employees are repeatedly in a most natural sense being discriminated. There is not even a sense of equality prevailing in the workplace and the gender sensitivity is null in Zoho environment. Even when an employee tried to complain against their delivery head of sexual harassment, the ICC and the HR tried to make them not complain and which made this employee resigned from the job. But at the last moment, this employee tried to bring out this issue to at least their colleagues in different teams through an email. Then the issue started spreading out to the employees. Immediately the employer started sending an email to the employers in a threatening way saying that if somebody has problem reported to HR or the concerned body like ICC, if they are not then and if they're complaining against a certain delivery head or a manager, we will file a case against them for damaging their reputation. Which is again, you're considering the Zoho's work culture which is already pro-patriarchy. This email is again threatening employees and specifically women employees who wants to come out. And third, the enforcers in US cases ongoing right now which talks about gender discrimination and age discrimination happening. So even in US enforcers says to their recruitment head that if women has a kid, don't recruit. And if a women or a men is reaching 50 or above 50 years of age, don't recruit. So such discrimination on gender basis or various forms are happening. And these are all not physical advancements. Such kind of actions or such kind of events are happening across the industry. And it is more worse in the IT enabled sections where data entry operators, e-publishing, medical coding companies are high. These harassments are, it's a daily affair and verbal abuse is something daily affair of these data entry, BPO and call center companies. Given such discrimination, especially gender basis, what are the demands that the United is placing to these companies, to these big IT corporations? What should be, what should initiatives should be taken? All these companies, so they maintain at least women employees, gender-wise at least women employees ratio to 30 percentage or 40 percentage depends on the company at the low and most of the pyramid. So when the hierarchy goes up, the companies, the representations are almost 10 or less than 10%. So they show, we can, it is very clear that if you are a women, you can't ascend in the career. And if you are a women, you will not have equal opportunity inside the companies. And you will not have equal pay as well. So gender inequality report of World Economic Forum states that at this rate, if corporations and government goes at this rate, it would take at least 200 years for us to reach a equal pay, equal opportunity for at least men and women. Forget about all other gender minorities. So when and women who are at least 50 percentage of are equal of the population, even for them, if it takes 200 years, which is almost like virtually saying it won't happen in the generation to come. So this is the state and any drastic, what we think is we need a drastic measure, it should start with giving representation to genders at least and from genders or even all social identities. Gender-wise representation is required, caste-wise representation is required. So all discriminations can be addressed only by giving representation at the decision-making level. So private sector reservation would be the first step and meaningful step to address this issue. Apart from that, this ICC constitution of the ICC is again, just for namesake, it is not running or doing its activity as per the guideline. So we need more accountability to the ICC. The fine amount is only 50,000, which is not agreeable for MNCs like TCS. 50,000 is nothing. So it should be proportional to their income. So 50,000 cap should be removed. It should be proportional to their income, 5%, 10%, which is what practiced in cybersecurity issues. When a cybersecurity issue happens, the company has to pay a certain percentage of their income, not 50,100 rupees or something like that, fixed amount. So that should be practiced. And this NGOs used as a ICC should be avoided. So there should be an activist who should preside the, who should be part of the committee and the representation of women should be maintained as per the guideline. And the sensitivity of the information is one another highlight we want to bring in. When an ICC case starts, there should be confidentiality, but everybody in the company will immediately know that a case has started, which should not be the case. Only after the decision has been made, it can be made public based on the need. And right now the ICC is being there for just for namesake. And it should be followed. All the details of the guidelines should be followed. And if a case has been filed, the one who filed should be asked whether the decision is satisfactory or not. And that data should be publicly out. If it is not out, then definitely all these cases and decisions are taken in favor of the employers in subject to understanding of the men that should be contested and that should be fought against. Thanks a lot for throwing insight into what happens in big IT companies. Thanks, welcome, and thanks for joining us. Thank you, bye.