Should IT staff fend for themselves?

The glamour of IT in general hides the fact that the IT workforce is not homogeneous.

The recent announcement by the Karnataka government that the IT and ITES industries would be henceforth treated as part of Essential Services marks a turning point in the dynamics of industrial relations in Karnataka.

In the new scenario, IT and ITES workers would no longer have the right to strike, or for that matter, engage in any form of collective action/collective bargaining related behaviour. The IT sector is not known for unionized activities, in fact it would be difficult to recall any single occasion when IT workers have gone on strike. Therefore, to now make it a part of the Essential Services is an act of the state which perhaps requires some probing. 

A possible explanation could be that IT work in fact can be seen to go against the basic rights of workers,  both in terms of the long hours that are required to be put in (violating the stipulated eight hour work day) and in terms of the requirement on workers to reverse the normal day-night schedule of work-rest, in order to work in western time zones.  It is a fact that most professionals in any field may voluntarily work more than eight hours. 

But the stipulated regulation of working hours is an integral part of workers rights which have historically been fought for, and which prevent employers and organizations from coercively imposing longer hours of work, which may threaten employees’ mental and physical health.  The new law by which IT becomes Essential Services may well mean that IT personnel could now be forced into longer working hours in a context where they would have no legal recourse against this, and where employers would no longer be accountable, in any sense, for employee well being.

Professional moves

The glamour of IT in general, and of India’s Silicon Valley in particular, hides the fact that the IT workforce is not homogeneous.  At one end of the IT industry are qualified software engineers/managers with swanky salaries living in plush apartment complexes, who make frequent professional moves between companies.  They represent India’s new knowledge economy,  their bargaining position determined by their highly marketable skills.  The presence or absence of state regulations, or of the right to strike, would make little difference to this genre of professionals.  However, at the other end,  are a large number of young men and women with only a SSLC or PUC and minimum knowledge of English and computers, who  are back office service providers, in a sector which exists at the rough edge of a cut-throat global structure of competition which can threaten their jobs or intensify work pressure in a manner that could render the workforce completely at the mercy of employers.  IT and ITES as Essential Services signals the state’s readiness to support these less known, essentially anti worker dimensions of this sector. 

But perhaps an even more important question here would be, what does this policy mean for an understanding of the state’s future trajectory of industrial policy? The drying up of manufacturing sector employment is a well known feature of India’s development in the last two decades, which have seen the services sector galloping ahead in terms of share of GDP.  Karnataka’s economic growth since the 1990s, has been predicated on the tertiary sector, and predominantly IT and ITES.  The growth of IT and  ITES  symbolises the contradictions embodied in what many have called jobless growth.

 One doesn’t have to be a radical Marxist in order to question IT’s centrality in India’s economic development.  In fact, liberal, centrist scholars such as Pranab Bardhan of Berkeley and Atul Kohli of Princeton, and even a recent World Bank publication have raised the question whether the services sector, particularly the knowledge and capital intensive IT and ITES, can be expected to lead development in India, where the largest numbers in the workforce are unskilled or semi skilled.  In this context, the Karnataka Congress government’s renewed commitment to IT appears somewhat bizarre. 

The new IT law in Karnataka ties the provision of subsidized land to IT companies on condition of providing employment.  In a knowledge intensive industry, employment for obvious reasons does not relate to opportunities for the urban unskilled workforce. 

Without taking away the importance of provision of jobs to a rising middle class, it is also important to highlight that an IT focussed industrial policy fails to pay attention to the fact that the IT sector’s importance in the economy is because of its high value addition and in exports, not in creating employment.  The employment clause in the new law therefore would appear to be an eye wash.  In addition, in a now completely unregulated sector, nothing would prevent a company from substantially downsizing its workforce, after having acquired land on the basis of projected employment figures.  

(The writer is associated with ISEC, Bangalore)