I feel we are going back in time.
From The Economic Times :
WHEN Infosys employees accept their annual hike letters this year, they will sign on more than just their annual salary rise. Alongside the hike letter, Infosys has also asked its employees to sign a non-compete agreement letter saying they will not join any customer or competitor for a period of six months after their job termination at Infosys.
The competition has been specified – Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Accenture, IBM Global Services, Cognizant Technology Solutions and Wipro. The letter also adds that the employees cannot accept a job offer from its clients (which they have serviced in the last 12 months) for a period of six months.
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Despite the rising popularity of non-compete clauses, its execution and legal enforcement remains a grey area.
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Under Section 27 Indian Contract Act, an employer cannot deny you the right to work for competitor. In high-profile lawsuits like Pepsi-Coca-Cola in the past, employers who sued have lost the case in favour of employees. But at large “these non-compete clauses certainly work as a big deterrent factor,” says Som Mandal, partner, Fox Mandal.
Read the complete article here.
P.S. I got the link to this article from a comment to this post. Thanks Suresh.
A large section of companies in serice sector including the IT seems to be making huge profits exploiting workers to the maximum. If one considers the hours of work undertaken by the employee and the salary he recieved, the average salary per hour would not be very high.
Only a few could make to the top and the world knows only success stories. What about the problems faced by IT workers in their family life because of their long and irregular working hours? What about their health?
IT workers need to form labour unions which should have fruitful interaction with the management. While liberalisation and globalisation is welcome international labour laws should be implemented in India also.
Since India is not a welfare state unlike the US or European nations the workers need to save a lot for their future and have to take their of needs themselves.