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IT professionals' forums in India
The Indian software and IT services industry has been growing through the 1990s at a rapid compound annual rate of over 50 per cent, soaring in value from US$175 million in 1989/90 to US$5.7 billion in a decade. Such growth has spurred a rapidly developing skilled workforce, swelled each year by new engineering and computer science graduates.
BANGALORE, India - The growth of the Indian IT sector has been aided by the Indian Government's policy of establishing specialist Software Technology Parks in about 18 Indian cities. Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi and its environs, Hyderabad and Chennai are all now important IT centres, with both indigenous Indian IT companies, such as Infosys, Satyam and Wipro Technologies, and Indian arms of multinational IT companies.
In two Indian cities, Bangalore and Hyderabad, IT professionals are now in the process of developing their own forms of collective organization, designed to represent their interests at work. These bodies are not trade unions in the traditional sense; however, they have strong international trade union support and can be seen potentially as presaging a new emerging form of worker representation, suitable for the needs of new industries in a new century.
The IT Professionals' Forum in Bangalore was launched at a public meeting in the city held in late 2000, and since then it has also developed an offshoot in the smaller city of Mysore, about 140 km to the southwest. According to its secretary H.S. Amar, about three hundred people have enrolled as members and at least a thousand other people have been in contact with the organization. Approximately 150 IT professionals attended its most recent public meeting, held in Bangalore in January of this year.
Its sister IT Professionals' Forum in Hyderabad was also launched in 2000, and has a similar level of support, judging from the 250 or so people who filled a hotel conference room in the city for a public meeting of the Forum recently. Hyderabad's impressive Cyber Towers, the first phase in the 'Hitec City' science park on the city's outskirts, opened about three years ago, and is now a base for GE Capital, Microsoft, Infosys and many other major companies.
Some in Hyderabad, indeed, now like to claim that their city should really be called 'Cyberabad'. The IT Professionals' Forum there has seen its ability to develop and service its members' needs increase since January this year, when it opened an office in a central area of the city. The initial costs of the office lease have been met by financial support offered by the Swedish trade union, SIF.
The IT Professionals' Forums have been strongly supported organizationally in their development by the international trade union federation, Union Network International (UNI), and have recently become UNI affiliates in their own right. Further moral support has been given by post and telecoms trade unions in India. However, the Forums very clearly say that they do not wish to describe themselves as trade unions, a term which they fear could prove off-putting to potential members. Similarly, they prefer to talk of "IT professionals" rather than "workers". Any talk of seeking confrontation with employers is most definitely eschewed.
Despite this, the work which they are undertaking for their members would be familiar to many trade unions. The Bangalore Forum, for example, has been concerned by the number of suicides in the IT sector, something it attributes to work-related stress, and it recently arranged for members to meet with a psychiatrist to discuss stress management techniques. Eye-strain from excessive computer monitor use is another concern, and the services of a professional optometrist have also been obtained. Back pain problems from poor working postures at workstations is another item on the agenda.
More generally, the Bangalore Forum has anxieties that IT professionals are working excessively long hours. One member who works for a major US IT multinational argues that although he is contracted to work eight hours a day for five days a week, in practice he and his colleagues feel that they have to unofficially work on Saturdays as well, in order to get their workload cleared. "Effectively we're working the sixth day for free," he says.
Ironically, some of the young IT professionals who have become active in the Bangalore Forum have the opposite problem. Engineering and computer science students graduating last year have been particularly unfortunate, since the economic, downturn in the United States and the effects of September 11 have contributed to a slower rate of growth in the second half of last year for the Indian IT industry. As a result job offers which students had been promised by IT firms have now in many cases been withdrawn. The problem, as one affected graduate points out, is that students who, like him, had received offers of work, felt themselves morally bound not to attend other companies' recruitment interviews - and now find themselves having missed out on other possible work opportunities.
For H.S. Amar, Secretary of the IT Professionals' Forum in Bangalore, the need for the Forum is not in doubt. He accepts, however, that the practicalities of developing the organization and building membership are challenging, not least since there is as yet no office in Bangalore to match the one in Hyderabad, and only members' voluntary time is available to deal with enquiries. With low membership fees of only a few hundred rupees a year, the Forums will continue to need external support for some time before they can hope to become self-sustaining.
Nevertheless, Union Network International sees these Indian IT professionals' associations as an important initiative in a sector which, internationally, is not known for high levels of trade union organization or worker representation. UNI's Gerhard Rohde, addressing members of the Bangalore Forum in January, told them that the need was to find effective "new types of organization", which he said might well look quite different from traditional trade union structures. "IT professionals should organize," he said, adding the rider, "They should be trying to find new ways of expressing their needs and demands." He drew attention to the experience of WashTech, which has used the Internet as a central tool in developing an association of Microsoft employees and other information technology workers in Washington State, USA, and the similar Web-based initiative in Silicon Valley, "Alliance@IBM". The issue of quasi-trade union structures suitable for young information and communication technology (ICT) workers worldwide featured in a debate by delegates at UNI's first World Congress, held in Berlin last September.
A broader opportunity to discuss the economic and employment prospects of the Indian IT sector from a strongly practical perspective, will be available next year at the national tripartite seminar which the ILO is planning to hold in Bangalore. The seminar will build on the ILO's key report, the World Employment Report 2001: Life at Work in the Information Economy, and is expected to bring together experts from Indian Government authorities and from the influential National Association of Software and Service Companies, NASSCOM.
- Andrew Bibby