A group of over 1,000 engineering graduates awaiting onboarding at Indian IT firm Infosys have finally received confirmation of their start date, after the firm was accused of exploitative hiring practices.
Infosys had come under fire from an Indian IT worker advocacy group, the Nascent Technology Employees Senate (NITES), after successful applicants, some of whom received offers in 2022, were consistently knocked back with unpaid ‘pre-training’ courses.
The affected individuals reported that they were told onboarding plans would be finalized by 19 August with the deadline passing with no further information forthcoming.
Salil Parekh, CEO at Infosys, responded to the allegations made in the NITES letter, stating that all graduates who received offers would be onboarded, but gave no further information on when this would happen.
The deadline was pushed back to 2 September 2024, when Infosys finally sent joining dates to roughly 1,500 graduates, confirming their starting date would be 7 October in Mysore.
ITPro approached Infosys for clarification on whether all 2,000 graduates mentioned in the letter published by NITES would be starting on 7 October, but was directed back to Parekh’s initial statement.
Infosys accused of “continued mistreatment and disregard” for graduates
The letter published by NITES was addressed to Mansukh Mandaviya, the national minister of Labor and Employment, criticizing Infosys for unprofessional conduct, after receiving complaints from some of the affected individuals.
“We have received multiple grievances from young engineering graduates who have been subjected to unprofessional and exploitative practices by Infosys Limited, one of India's largest IT companies,” the letter stated
“The continued mistreatment and disregard for these graduates, who are the future of our nation, cannot be tolerated. As a prominent IT and ITES union working for the welfare and rights of employees, we feel it is our duty to bring this matter to the highest levels of government to seek justice and protection for these young professionals.”
A series of mandatory pre–training sessions followed, some of which took as long as six weeks, without any financial compensation for taking part in these exercises. Failure to attend the pre-training would result in the candidate having their offer rescinded, NITES added.
The letter stated that although the prospects had already completed the pre-training sessions, the results were never distributed and some were asked to retake the program.
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“Despite successfully completing the pre-training, the promised results were never communicated, leaving the graduates in limbo for over 20 days. To their shock, instead of receiving their joining dates, these graduates were informed that they needed to retake the pre-training exam offline, once again without any remuneration. “
In a previous letter sent to the Indian Labour Ministry, NITES demanded Infosys fulfill its obligations and compensate the graduates with full salary payments for the period of delayed onboarding.
It also requested that employees were provided with assistance to address the mental and physical stress caused by the delay,
