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TCS MAY SACK NEARLY 300 EMPLOYEES AT FINLAND OFFICE

Tata Consultancy Services, the country’s largest software
company, may sack as many as 290 employees at its Finland office, a move that the workers
say is an attempt to shift jobs to India.
TCS, which has a registered office in Helsinki and has an employee strength of about 800 in Finland,
is currently in negotiations with the employee representatives over the move to cut jobs.
Jobs at stake:
The Union of Professional Engineers in Finland (UIL) has claimed that about 412 jobs
were at stake, a figure which TCS said was inaccurate.
“If I remember... 412, I believe is the correct number,” UIL Director
(Collective Bargaining) Ismo Kokko told PTI when asked about the number of jobs at stake in TCS.
When contacted, a TCS
spokesperson said: “The maximum number of roles
affected is 290 and not the numbers you have mentioned,
which are completely
inaccurate.”
Lay-offs may be less than even 290, some sources privy to TCS
management said.
Job cuts:
In April, over 160 employees at the Finland office of TCS staged a walkout protesting against job
cuts. These employees were outsourced by Nokia to TCS in March. The employees are based in Espoo, Salo, Tampere and Oulu.
“On April 25, there was a spontaneous walkout from all
TCS offices located at Nokia premises in Finland. People felt
angry and betrayed over the fact that it only took TCS seven weeks to show their true colours. Many
people felt that Nokia simply outsourced its layoffs and dirty
work to TCS,” sources closely following the developments
revealed.
Outsourcing of employees:
Nokia had made the
announcement related to outsourcing of employees in
January and the total number of Nokia employees to be
transferred was 820, of which about 560 were to go to TCS and
230 to HCL, Kokko said.Separately, Nokia also cut jobs at
its IT centre by up to 300 employees.
Kokko said that negotiations with employee representatives are currently going on and will conclude soon, which was also
confirmed by sources, who wished not to be quoted.
“TCS is going through the official employee negotiation process
with the ERs as required by Finnish law. The minimum
negotiation time is six weeks and the meetings are scheduled to end soon. After that, TCS has to inform their final plans, including
how many people they plan to lay-off,” they added.
The lay-off comes amid TCS announcing plans to hire over 45
000 people globally this year,sources said.
Kokko claimed that the lay-offs are not justified as the work has not reduced.
“We want all the people to keep their jobs. They were outsourced only a couple of months ago and the work that they are doing for
Nokia has not reduced at all,” he said.
He, however, added: “We are afraid that jobs and work will be
moved outside Finland somewhere may be to India or
may be to another country. That’s
our main concern.”