MNS IN WNS
Saturday, 12th April, 2008
For the first time, labour strife could be creeping into parts of India’s outsourcing industry. WNS Global Services, one of India’s biggest BPO experienced this first hand at its Nasik unit when a section of workers protested over pay earlier this week and approached local politicians to help them. Till now, attempts to unionize employees in the BPO industry have not been notably successful.
While the Nasik matter has now been resolved, independent local sources in Nasik said the employees stayed away from work for two days and returned to work after repeated assurances from the management. Yearly earning from the BPO industry is estimated at $11 billion for 07-08.
A WNS spokesperson denied there was a strike at the Nasik centre, but admitted some workers were asking for payment of additional bonus and that it was in talks with them. “In October 2007the Government of India passed a notification which required the industry to retrospectively change its bonus payout for employees from April 1 2006. We have complied with this notification and paid bonuses accordingly. On account of additional payment of statutory bonus payouts, for that period, among certain high performing and average performing employees of WNS has reduced. As a result, some of our employees were asking for payment of additional bonus over and above statutory/ performance incentive bonus for the year 2006-07, we are in active discussion with these employees and hope to resolve the issue soon”, said a spokesperson of WNS.
The local unit of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena appears to have played a minor role in the matter. The MNS says some workers sought its help to resolve a bonus pay dispute with WNS management, while the company maintains its employees were just holding talks with it for more money.
`The disgruntled employees did approach our two local corporators citing problems with the company’s management. But before we could come into the picture, the problem was resolved, Ashok Chandak, general secretary for the Nasik unit of MNS. However, in contrast to recent agitations by the party headed by Raj Thackeray, the worker strife at WNS did not have a “Marathi” angle and was only about bonus payment.
