Two years on, no action against Genpact’s alleged labour law violation

Hyderabad: Two years on, the Telangana labor department has yet to submit an action taken report on the complaint against Genpact.

In November 2018, activist Vijay Gopal had filed a complaint against Genpact alleging that the company is violating working hour norms, overtime policies, and a notice period of the employees.

Later Joint Commissioner of labor issued a notice to Genpact asking the company to explain its position.

"Our company is compliant to section 30 of Telangana shops and establishment act 1998. Also, our company works only 5 days a week with two weekly holidays. We also give extra holidays beyond as prescribed by the statute," Genpact said in its reply in April,2019.

Later, the labor department forwarded the Genpact’s reply to Vijay Gopal.

Not satisfied with the reply, The complainant marked the copy again to the labor department highlighting the discrepancies.

“Most of the employees work overtime for ten hours. According to law, they can only work for 48 hours a week and beyond that, they are entitled to overtime wages. The company doesn’t have a proper mechanism to count the work hours of the employees. An employee can only work 54 hours including six hours of overtime a week according to the law. Most of the employees are exploited. Supervisor and executives are asked to report to work even on off days," He said.

Genpact however, said it has a robust mechanism of card swiping at every entry and exit gates which records the logs of ingress and egress of each employee.

“Additionally, there is a mechanism to track the actual work done on the system by an employee in the organization. The requirement of an employee to serve a 90 days’ the notice period is more of a contractual term, which is mentioned in the offer/appointment letter of the employee, which is agreed by the employee when accepting the employment,” Genpact said.

Vijay Gopal however said Genpact’s argument is flawed. "According to the S&E Act, section 47(3) every employee has to serve 15 days of the notice period if he wants to resign but it's not mandatory. The executives are asked to serve 90 days notice period, which is against the act. The 24 leaves per annum are against the legal requirement of 49 days, which includes 15 days of paid leave, 12 days of sick level, 12 days of casual leave, and 10 days of holidays in a year. The executive is asked to serve 3 months of the notice period,” he said.

Vijay Gopal alleged that the labor department doesn't implement the rules in letter and spirit. “When I asked whether ITES company is adhering to leave policy under Shops and Establishment Act, the Department of Labour in its reply said 'No Records Available’, which shows how serious they are about implementing laws,” he said.

The activist said the Joint Commissioner of labor has yet to present its action taken report. "It has been years, I still have to receive action taken reply from the Joint Commissioner of Labour, even after asking for reply in August 2019 and June 2020” he said.