Non-compete clause: union may pursue complaint against Infosys with state authorities

“A follow-up hearing for joint discussions was held on Thursday in New Delhi and it seems like the issue cannot be resolved amicably as Infosys’ team did not turn up again. Also, it appears as the central government may not have the powers to take appropriate action in this case despite labour being a concurrent subject. We had approached the centre only because

has multiple branches across the country,” said Harpreet Saluja, president, Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate, told ET.

Sources also told ET that Infosys has written a letter to the labour ministry to explain its position.

Infosys did not respond to detailed queries till the time of going to press. The chief labour commissioner did not offer to comment on the development.

This is the third hearing Infosys has skipped after the ones on May 16 and April 28.

According to the offer letters of India’s second largest IT company, an employee shall not accept for six months an employment offer from “named competitors” such as

, and HCL Technologies among others, if the new job involves working with a customer with whom the employee has worked in the preceding 12 months during his/her stint at Infosys.

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It also says that for six months an employee should not accept employment offers from a customer with whom he/she has directly worked in the preceding 12 months.

“It is a standard business practice in many parts of the world for employment contracts to include controls of reasonable scope and duration to protect the confidentiality of information, customer connection and other legitimate business interests,” Infosys had told ET last month.

The conditions are fully disclosed to all job aspirants before they decide to join Infosys, and do not prevent employees from joining other organisations, according to the statement.