Three years ago, when R Karthik Shekhar started Union for IT/ITeS (UNITES) as a trade union for workers in the software/BPO sector, few took him seriously. Yet, within just three years, the 35-year old computer science engineer has managed to get 18,000 members in UNITES. That Shekhar has received the usual intimidating calls and even threats to his life — a year ago, around the time he was taking up the cause of employees terminated from some Bangalore BPOs, a van with two people in it rammed into his car and fled — indicates he’s having some impact. With the entire IT/ITeS industry in trouble following the global crisis, Shekhar’s task is to ensure his members are treated fairly. The slowdown in the sector, Shekhar says, has also ensured that his membership is rising rapidly these days.
UNITES is affiliated to a worldwide federation of unions called UNI (Union Network International) — UNI is headquartered in Geneva, and has a presence in 130 countries and represents 13 industry sectors. It is also affiliated to INTUC in India.
Promoting unionism in a sector like IT/ITeS has not been an easy task for Shekhar, a computer science graduate from BMS Engineering College in Bangalore. He quit his job in IBM after he took up an issue with the management on behalf of his colleagues. He then tried his luck at an e-commerce venture in Bangalore and exited that too for what he called ‘bad management’. This was perhaps the last straw, and, after a decade of working in the software industry, Shekhar finally decided to opt for ‘a bigger cause’.
The decision to quit the high-paying job at IBM was taken at a time when his family was passing through a difficult time, but Shekhar decided to become UNITES’ founding secretary general for India. “This was the real roller coaster ride of my life. It was really a testing time for me. There was no salary. I could not even do a part-time job since I had to spearhead many campaigns in order to grow the organisation”, Shekhar recalls. His wife, Padmini, who is now part of a woman’s self-help group, dabbled in business to keep things going.
UNITES is perhaps the only recognised face (union) of the IT/ITeS workers. After the initial hard days, the organisation has started spreading wings thanks to the effort of Shekhar and his small team in taking up issues relating to safety, security and other issues relating to the industry.
One such issue, which UNITES plans to go to court on, is that staffers in IT and BPO firms are ‘involuntarily’ working for more than 12 hours a day in violation of the daily 8-hour working mandate of the Indian Factories Act, 1948. While the IT/BPO firms argue the longer hours merely compensate for the shorter work-week, Shekhar argues IT/ITeS firms are firing people citing lack of orders while getting existing staffers to work longer hours at the same time. Given how the industry has been seen as the torchbearer for new and efficient HR practices, the outcome of the case promises to be an interesting one.