The Plight of I.T. Workers

Beneath the Glitz 

For cadres of the working-class movement, it is natural to be curious about the class location of every working person. When it comes to workers, men and women, in the Information Technology (IT) Industry, questions are being raised about their “working class” identities. There are also very profound and convincing formulations like ‘key-board slaves’, ‘knowledge workers’, ‘modern working class in new economics’ in the era of technological advancements, etc. The essay seeks to appraise the positive and negative aspects of those questions.

Vast majority of IT workers often live with the illusory belief that their well-being justifies pro-capital economic reforms.  Hence, they are often in favor of maintaining the status-quoism. This stratum of people can never quite relate themselves to the working men and women and cannot understand how privileged they are at the current level of development of science and technology and the significance of the IT sector in the operations of capital. They cannot fully grasp the degree of exploitation through capital’s appropriation of the surplus value.

Job Insecurity

The estimated work force in IT and Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) is around 55-60 lakhs. All the glory these sections of working people see is limited to a few states within India which are relatively better in terms of capital inflows. It is usually in these states that people pick up technical skills and also some knowledge of English language which are necessary for employment in this sector.

Besides, we are witnessing a situation where there is an abundant supply of skilled IT workers on the one hand, and there is a rapid deskilling of IT work on the other. The media-hyped success stories of entrepreneurship is hardly a phenomenon in itself.

The corporate management model makes IT sector jobs more insecure than they sometimes appear. The question of financial crisis of IT workers arises from the job insecurities inherent in the management model. Right from recruitment, project billing models to performance appraisal models, the structure is designed in such a way that the employees remain disunited and utmost individualism is encouraged at the workplace in spite of tall talks of promoting team work, collective model, etc.

Be it the fixed price model, the time and material model, or any other project bidding model, managers always look to maximize their profits and minimize their costs. Managers are offered percentages of the cost saved in the execution of a project. Obviously, the interest of a manager lies in maximizing his/her own earnings by saving the cost to the company. While any other expenditure is constant, the only variable component is the investment on resources, including human resources. Hence, the formula “more output brought out with less human resources” is one of the key aspects to ensure a higher and more consistent rate of profit in the IT sector. This is like all other sectors of the economy.  The amount of pressure exerted on the employees, in the process, results in causing damage to their work life balance and creates huge distress in their lives.

If the billing to the project has come to an end, the employee who was once an asset to the project will suddenly become a liability to the company, no matter how much skillful the person was. The amount of pressure exerted on individuals due to this perpetual job insecurity counterbalances the privileges they hold by virtue of relatively higher wages when they entered the company.  Thus, arises an objective need for unionization and for a concerted and united fight against such cruel and rampant exploitation. But the corporate world has its mitigation plan to curb this thought of unionization. Recruitment and performance appraisal models are put in place as institutional bulwarks against workers’ collectivization.

Exploitation and the Bell Curve Model

There is seldom a uniform standard that a company follows about pay scales, either at the time of recruitment or of performance appraisal. In the course of recruitment, two skilled workers possessing equal skills and interviewed for the same position, for the same nature of work and job requirements are never offered the same wage packages. Differences in salaries are very consciously and systematically created to sow the seeds of disunity at workplace. In some cases, even a nominal difference is maintained, merely to engineer disunity and to secure an unquestionable loyalty from the other person with a marginal hike in salary.

Performance appraisal usually follows the Bell Curve model. According to this model, 10% of the team members should be rated as extra ordinary performers. 20% of team should be rated as good performers. 60% of team should be rated as performers who met the expectations and rest 10% should be rated as under performers. The difference in salaries between one category and the other may not be huge, but it helps to segmentise workers.

The top 10% workers’ egos are boosted, and they often become willful loyalists of the management. The following 20% become the competitors of the first 10%. The next 60% also become willful loyalists out of the fear of insecurity as they feel that they have just escaped the ‘under performer’ tag and also because they have the option to crave for the earnings of the top 20%.  The last 10% are forced to suffer a sense of guilt and insecurity. The 10% rated as under performers are forced to leave whenever the company wanted to restructure or to shed its workforce. This is usually done not by termination but by resignation. The workers are forced to resign voluntarily, which they do either out of guilt or compulsion.

Thus, the workforce is segmented, and the employees are set against each other despite possessing same set of skills. Whichever be the organization, and whatever be the performance appraisal model in use, the Bell Curve has become a preferred model for IT companies. This is how a sense of disunity is created and individualism is promoted among the employees. The employees are trapped in a rat race.

Simmering Resistance

Dissent and distress among IT workers may not always be evident. Discrimination along caste, religion, class, and gender are becoming more and more evident in recent times. The corporate capital, instead of destroying these divisions, often reconstitutes them. 

Some employees find temporary relief, following abrupt terminations, by joining a new company with a better package. This happens because there is still a shortage of skilled labour in some areas within the IT sector. This situation, however, may change soon, given the evolving needs of capital. There are many who do not find a respite but hold back from struggling for their rights because they lack awareness of the labour laws and of the benefits of unionization. IT employees were not recognized as workmen for a pretty long time. Later, there were judgements that recognized IT workers as workmen and supported the rights of IT employees. Still, the awareness has not spread much. Many states have provided exemption to IT industries from the coverage of Standing Orders Act.

Now, in the changed circumstances and in the backdrop of new Labour Codes, IT employees are in for more troubles. Thus, the changing circumstances are paving the way for IT workers to join hands with working people of other sectors. Resistance by IT workers is simmering all the way. ν