Infosys, labour union to hold talks to discuss non-compete clause on Tuesday

This comes as the earlier scheduled discussion for Monday was postponed due to Buddha Purnima being a public holiday. Infosys was served another notice dated 29 April after the IT company’s representatives sought a fresh date to attend the discussion after not appearing for the first hearing on April 28.

“The reply/written statement with respect to the public grievance of Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate can be submitted on or before 16 May,” the follow-up notice said. ET has reviewed a copy of the notice signed by Chief Labour Commissioner Remis Tiru and addressed to Krish Shankar, Group Head, Human Resources, Infosys. Infosys did not respond to the email queries sent by ET.

This comes as labour union, in April, has raised a complaint against Infosys with the central labour ministry and sought
removal of a non-compete agreement clause in offer lettersgiven by the country’s second largest software firm.

The company’s employee agreement states that an
employee shall not accept for such as TCS, Wipro and HCLamong others if the new job involves working with a customer with whom the employee has previously worked with in the preceding 12 months during their stint at Infosys, the union said in its complaint.

Infosys chief Salil Parekh told
ET in an interview in April that the practice has been in vogue “for quite a long time now and its main objective is to protect the intellectual property and other business interests of clients.”

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“Our employees will work with other companies as and when they choose to. So that is not the constraint from our perspective at all,” he had said.

The IT industry has been battling an acute talent crunch for the last few quarters. The attrition rate at Infosys hit 27.7% for the quarter ended March 31, while the metric stood at 17.4% at bigger rival

.