Bengaluru: Half an hour after he reported to work, an IT employee from Bengaluru learned that he had been laid off. “This is to inform you that today is your last working day,” read the email, which he said was sent with no prior notice from his employer, the beleaguered ed-tech startup, Byju’s. It was also the day he learned that there was a union for people like him—the All India IT and ITeS Employees’ Union or AIITEU.
That was in November 2023. Since then, the Karnataka chapter of AIITEU has been helping him fight for his full and final settlement. The last 10 months have been a blur of paperwork, red tape, and hearings at the Karnataka Labour Court.
Trade unions in the booming IT sector have been viewed as an oxymoron in the new India Story. There was an air of exceptionalism that pervaded the IT industry. It brought dizzying growth, glory, foreign exchange, and prestige.
Its global connectedness meant working across time zones with overseas clients and bosses, and impossibly ambitious deadlines. This wasn’t the old India of Inspector Raj and labour unions—the outdated rules didn’t apply to the flat, new world. So, even the idea of unions was anathema.
It was seen as an unnecessary vestige of an era that held business back. Small efforts were made in fits and starts by IT employees in the past three decades, but it never really gained ground in the larger Bengaluru narrative. But unravelling bankruptcy and massive layoffs at Byju’s have acted as the late.