http://www.tehelka.com/story_main52.asp?filename=Fw020412GROUNDED.asp

Withholding salaries of airline staff is a violation of  the payment of wages act of 1936

By Amitava Ghosh

THE RECENT case of blocking compensation and thereby, flouting the basic rights of an employee by some reputed airlines leads to the perception that a job in the aviation sector is highly risky in today’s turbulent business climate.
 
What these companies don’t realise  is that delayed payment of wages is not just a violation of the Payment of Wages  Act, 1936 but also causes delay in contribution under the Employees’ Provident  Fund & Misc Provisions Act, Profession Tax Act, etc, all of which amounts to  breaches of statutory provision and can attract penal provisions

 Under section 3 of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936, it is the  responsibility of every employer to pay wages within a stipulated period. No  employer can block salaries, even when the company is in the red.

Even where a competent authority is satisfied that the delay  was due to an emergency, or the existence of exceptional circumstances, Section  17A of the Act stipulates attachment of the property of the person responsible,  in case he/she defaults in paying wages to employees within a prescribed time  limit.

While the direct impact of recession in the case of these aviation companies is undeniable, withholding compensation smacks of unfair labour practices. At present, nearly 1,200 airlines employees of Kingfisher, Jet  Airways and Air India are on a stir, reflecting the serious state of affairs  with this industry.

 In any business, the organisation has a clear estimate of the wage bill and the cost of each employee to the company that must be payable over and above all other costs. If an organisation claims it is unable to do so because it’s in the red, the excuse would be inadmissible, as it’s easy to see that debts of companies like Kingfisher were not accumulated in a day. They had sufficient warnings in their daily financial transactions that they ignored and  must have had several opportunities to take remedial measures in the past. Blocking employee salary as a last recourse, to clear third party debts is completely unwarranted and undesirable. Kingfisher’s wage bill would anyway be just a fraction of its mounting debt.

It’s significant to note that the pilots and crew members have remained committed to their job and have been discharging their duty until it became difficult for them to continue working any longer without pay. In denying them their dues, their employers are forgetting that compensation is not  a bargaining chip; it’s their fundamental right of workers.

No business can run without human resource and even with a high degree of automation, this resource is non-replaceable. In the past also, nearly 130 Jet Airways flights got cancelled, when their pilots went on leave, en mass. The issue then was the sacking of two pilots, something that the Labour  Commissioner should have looked into and resolved at the earliest, but the case  dragged on, causing a lot of hardship in the form of delayed salaries.

Kingfisher pilots’case is more hopeless as tax authorities have frozen seven more bank accounts of the carrier. There are reports that quite a few pilots are facing foreclosures on their housing loans. In a measure,  it’s good that they have refused to fly because making them work under such  stressful circumstances is only going to endanger the lives of passengers and  that’s something we must avoid at all costs.

The author is senior vice president (Regulatory) TeamLease, a staffing solutions company

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/ganesha-on-the-dashboard-launched/245227-60-119.html

BANGALORE: The latest offering by V Raghunathan, the author of ‘Games Indians Play’ and ‘The Corruption Conundrum’ is out.

Titled ‘Ganesha on the Dashboard’ and co-authored with  MA Eswaran, the book launch took place at the Reliance TimeOut, Cunningham Road  recently.

Manish Sabharwal, CEO of TeamLease, India's largest  temporary staffing company, released the book which was followed by an 
interactive session with the author himself. An unsparingly critical and scathingly analytical book, it points out the shocking lack of scientific temper  among the vast majority of Indians, and how this Holds us up as a nation in the  twenty-first century. Speaking about the impetus that drove him to write this  book, Raghunathan talked about how Indians have segregated science to be a 
knowledge system while all others are categorised as a belief system.

"Anything in the belief system is considered to be above reproach and questioning. So we find even an educated Indian performing
an  inane ritual to counter the harmful effects of Shani or Mangal.

The scientific beliefs that existed when these were  prescribed have long been disapproved but we haven’t adjusted our thought 
processes accordingly.

�It is this lack of scientific temper that is holding  back India," he said. The author also commented about the robust growth rate  from 1991 onwards when India might safely assume there was no significant growth  in the scientific temper.

He gave the comparison of India being driven by a very  small and powerful engine, the enlightened few, dragging along a lot of
empty  bogies. "Supposing that this attitude reached the masses, there was no reason  why India couldn’t achieve a double-digit growth rate. The global financial  crisis, which might be attributed to the application of scientific principle to  the social science of economics, was pointed out as an example where this  attitude backfired.

To this the author explained that science and scientific temper were two entirely different concepts. "The application of a scientific tool precipitated the crisis but the scientific temper in methodology  being used to understand the failure would help us avoid such
fiascos in the  future," he said.

The inherent differences between science and religion  were also discussed. The author signed off by explaining three action points  which will help India in incorporating this scientific thinking in its citizens - The retraining of teachers and revision of examination system and finally  approaching social sciences in a scientific manner.

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/thanks-to-ups-jobless-dole-job-exchanges-back-in-spotlight/469716/

The narrow lanes leading to the employment exchange in Ghaziabad have never been so busy, not even when there was employment to offer. While the new government in Uttar Pradesh doesn't have jobs to provide, its poll promise of an unemployment allowance of Rs 1,000 is helping long-ignored employment exchanges in the state rediscover their charm.


"I am not very short of money, but if you are getting Rs 1,000 sitting at home, why not?" says Mina, 40, waiting in queue to submit her application for unemployment allowance. In the long queue dominated by women, few are seeking employment. "Earlier, we were getting 50 applications a day, mostly from people seeking employment. Since the last week, there are 1,200-1,500 people
registering with us daily. Almost all of them are coming for the unemployment allowance," says Athar Ali, district employment officer at Ghaziabad's employment exchange. "Very few register for employment, since there are no vacancies."

Fall from grace

The irony is an institution developed to provide employment has become a facilitator of unemployment, exemplifying the
deteriorating role of employment exchanges in the country. However, the case of Uttar Pradesh is not unique. A look at the data on the status of employment exchanges across the country shows how these institutions have been ignored by successive governments. Between 2000 and 2009, when the country generated large number of employment opportunities, only 11 exchanges were added. In this scenario, a network of 969 employment exchanges is left untapped, even as industry complains of shortage of manpower to fuel growth. In 2009, there were 39.1 million candidates at employment exchanges.

Placements provided through employment exchanges also fell by 16 per cent in 2009. Employment exchanges gave placements to 261,000 candidates in 2009, compared to 304,000 candidates in 2008. A substantial portion of these jobs, however, came from Gujarat, which accounted for 154,000 placements. Gujarat, which had 41 employment exchanges in 2009, was followed by Maharashtra (24,000 placements) and Tamil Nadu (16,000).

However, if the placement record of the top three states - Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu - is analysed, it reveals 122 employment exchanges in these states accounted for 75 per cent of the total placements made in the country.


Established in 1945, employment exchanges were first used to resettle demobilised defence service personnel and discharged war workers in civil life, following the end of the World War II. After Independence, these exchanges began providing employment to displaced persons from Pakistan. The same year, however, the scope of employment exchanges was substantially increased, when their services were extended to cover unemployment services in all categories.

At present, their primary objective is to provide settlement of job seekers through regular jobs or self-employment. Apart from providing jobs, they are also required to collect employment market information, and provide career counselling and vocational guidance to those who come seeking for jobs. Public sector establishments and private companies are mandated under the Employment Exchanges (Compulsory Notification of Vacancies) Act, 1959, to notify with employment exchanges, if they are employing 25 or more workers.


A major blow to the future of employment exchanges came in 1996, when the Supreme Court ruled that public and private companies didn't have to approach employment exchanges if they ensured that the vacancies were well publicised. The directorate general of employment & training (DGET) of the ministry of labour and employment is frank in its admission. "Employment exchanges are left with only stray cases, that too at the lower levels of appointment. Therefore, in the placement side, the role of employment exchanges is definitely going to be not very significant," the DGET says on its website.

What job exchanges need?
In 2009, Bangalore-based staffing company TeamLease approached the Karnataka government with a proposal to set up an employment exchange on public-private partnership (PPP). TeamLease invested Rs 75 lakh to Rs 1 crore in infrastructure and in July 2010, the first PPP employment exchange was set up as the Karnataka Employment Centre (KEC), which ran pilot projects in two districts - Bijapur and Mangalore. In six months, TeamLease claimed they were able to place more than 400 candidates.


Unlike in government-run employment exchanges, TeamLease says it ensured the focus was shifted from 'just providing employment to employability'. So, anyone who wanted a job, could call the KEC call centre, where the candidate's basic abilities were assessed. On the basis of the candidate's education and skills, he was called for a more advanced one-hour assessment at the centre. He was then given feedback, based on his knowledge, skills, aptitude and behaviour. Based on the results of these tests, the candidate received a call within 72 hours with a suitable job option. All those whose skills were not found to be up-to-the-mark were given the option to register with the centre for skill improvement.

The Planning Commission's approach paper to the 12th five-year plan also recommended the promotion of public-private partnership in employment exchanges. The approach paper says in employment exchanges, "There is a need for removal of
entry-barriers to private participation, while putting in place an effective regulatory framework for coordinating the network of private players, as also for monitoring, evaluating and analysing outcomes of various programmes."

Manish Sabharwal, chairman of TeamLease, says the government would make a big mistake, if it began ignoring employment exchanges.

"Instead of shutting them down, the government should reorganise them into career centres," Sabharwal says. According to Sabharwal, government-run employment exchanges should shift their focus from providing employment to building abilities of candidates on employability. "Employment exchanges should be focusing on five key aspects which they aren't doing now - assessment, counselling, training, apprenticeship and employment."

The Planning Commission's 12th five-year plan says the labour force in India is expected to increase by 32 per cent over the next 20 years. A major portion of this labour force can be tapped through the 969 employment exchanges in the country. If tapped successfully, these institutions have the potential of solving India's labour woes.

http://week.manoramaonline.com/cgi-bin/MMOnline.dll/portal/ep/theWeekContent.do?programId=1073754900&contentId=11172595

Every three months, Manmohan Singh meets with a special panel assigned with an ambitious task - to figure out how to produce 500 million skilled workers over the next two decades. The panel is a cross-section of India's power elite, including many of the usual figures - the education minister, the finance minister and the former chief executive of the country's biggest software outsourcing company. Then there is a more curious choice - Manish Sabharwal. Sabharwal runs TeamLease, a Bangalore-based agency that has created thousands of jobs by fielding temporary workers for companies in India that want to expand their workforce while skirting India's stringent labour laws, which businesses say discourage the hiring of permanent employees. Many labour leaders and left-leaning politicians accuse him of running the nation's largest illegal business.
He does not completely disagree “We should not exist,” Sabharwal, a 40-year-old graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said about his company, which has 60,000 employees. “The genius of India is to allow us to exist.” What Sabharwal calls ‘genius' that others would call dysfunction, or at the very least, an elaborate workaround, or temporary fix.India is known the world over as a prime innovator of outsourcing for foreign companies, which take advantage of its cheap, english-speaking labour force. Less well known is the extent to which Indian companies outsource their own jobs within their own country.
Walk into any of India's shining new shopping malls that sell expensive brands, like Gucci, Boss and Satya Paul, and many of the store clerks, janitors and security guards will be on the payrolls of outsourcing companies, not those of the owners of the mall or stores in it, executives say. The practice highlights a fundamental tension between India's socialist past and a new freewheeling,
private sector that is increasingly powering the economy while chaffing at what many companies say are laws so protective of workers that they blunt hiring and stifle growth.Sabharwal provides a backdoor way around the old system in a manner that is not without controversy. He fills thousands of jobs at a cost that allows many companies to continue to function and even helps retrain
India's large population of young jobseekers – half of Indians are 25 or younger – who are under-educated and ill-prepared to enter the labour force.

In that highly competitive environment for jobs, Sabharwal supplies workers who are paid as little as half of what permanent employees earn and who usually receive few benefits. Though technically temporary, many of them keep their status at the same companies for years. In India's nascent industrial hubs near New Delhi, autoworkers are increasingly protesting the use and treatment of the kind of contract workers Sabharwal supplies, who lack job security.But the reason Sabharwal has thrived, he and others say, is because India needs him. The nation's complex web of federal and state labour laws intended to protect permanent workers are so onerous that few employers want to hire them, they say. Those laws cover virtually every aspect of employment – how workers are hired, how much they are paid, how many hours they can work and whether they can be fired. Factories employing 100 or more workers are not allowed to lay off employees without the government's permission.
“For business, labour laws are a thorn in the side, not a dagger in the heart,” Sabharwal said. “People who are hurt the most are people who need to get off farms, labour market outsiders, people from small towns, the less educated, the less skilled.”


AN UNLIKELY ENTREPRENEUR
TeamLease is not the business Sabharwal set out to open.During the 1970s, when he and his family spent four years in
Washington, a question kept nagging him - “Americans weren't really smarter than  us, but why were they richer than us?”
He wanted to start a business. But  first, he said, he had to learn how a free-market economy worked. So, with his
grandparents paying the tuition bill, he went to the Wharton School.

At  Wharton, professors and friends say, he worked with single-minded focus on a  business plan – not for TeamLease, but for a private insurance company, India  Life, which he hoped would take on the state monopoly. But back in India,  policymakers were not yet willing to introduce competition in the insurance  industry. He hit a brick wall.Then one day, an Indian manager at Siemens,  the German company, complained to him about the tedium of processing payroll and  benefits paperwork. Sabharwal decided to turn India Life into an outsourcing  company to do that work.In 2001, Hewitt, a U.S. company, acquired India  Life. A year later, Sabharwal and his partner, Ashok Reddy, started TeamLease to  solve another frequent problem clients complained about - hiring and managing  employees in the thicket of India's complex labour laws.


WORK IN THE NEW ECONOMY
Today, one of TeamLease's biggest clients is  Whirlpool, the U.S. appliance-maker. In 1997, a few years after Whirlpool
arrived in India, it hired hundreds of salesmen and sent them to independent  retail stores to sell washing machines, refrigerators and air-conditioners to  middle-class Indians who had never bought such appliances before. But soon executives were overwhelmed trying to keep abreast of changes in labour laws and  various minimum-wage rules in India's 28 states.
So Whirlpool began  outsourcing its sales staff, which has since grown to 1,850 people – first to a  staffing agency called Adecco and later to TeamLease. Excluding 250 people who  work at the company's own stores, most of its sales workers are employed by
TeamLease, which handles their wages, commissions, health care and retirement  savings.
Unlike in the United States, where temporary workers are rotated  between job sites, in India contract workers often stay in some jobs for years. 
Arun Gour, 25, joined Whirlpool's sales team as a contract worker about four  years ago in Yamunanagar, a town 190 kilometers north of Delhi. After smashing  sales records, he was promoted this year to a job at Whirlpool's Indian  headquarters in Gurgaon, a booming city just south of New Delhi, where he  collects and processes sales data from around the country.
Gour makes about  18,000 rupees a month, a good salary by Indian standards, and he has access to a  government-run retirement-savings plan and health insurance. He said he hoped to  be promoted onto Whirlpool's payroll so he could earn more money and receive  better benefits.

I am very proud that I am providing for my family,” Gour  said, speaking of his wife and mother, who still live in Yamunanagar. “I have  Friends from college who are looking for work. Some of them have master's  degrees and they are earning 6,000 or 7,000 a month.”


A FLAWED SYSTEM

Not all are as happy as Gour. About 50 kilometers south of  New Delhi along the dusty highway to Jaipur lies Manesar, one of India's new  industrial boomtowns. There, more than 1,00,000 workers – about 30 percent of  them on contracts – toil in the factories of Indian and multinational companies  like Maruti Suzuki, Videocon, Mitsubishi and Honda.While the factories have
been profitable and have provided new jobs, both labour and management are  frustrated. Workers complain about the expanding ranks of contract workers who  are paid a fraction of what regular employees earn and receive few benefits, and  they say that there are not enough jobs to begin with.Corporate executives  say that India's restrictive labour laws force them to hire and train contract  Workers who feel no loyalty to them, and that finding skilled workers is  difficult.
In October, the Indian government proposed letting ailing  factories lay off workers if they offered unemployment insurance. But, the
provision would apply only to companies in a few new manufacturing zones.  Analysts say policy-makers are unlikely to consider broader reforms in the next  few years because there is a deadlock between advocates for change like Prime  Minister Singh and lawmakers who believe that any weakening of laws would hurt  workers.In the meantime, many economists assert that India's labour laws  will continue to restrict the country's job growth, at least in the formal  sector. While that is bad news for India, it is a circumstance that continues to  allow Sabharwal's business to thrive. In 2010, it grew by 10,000  employees.His company had $160 million in revenue in 2010 and is growing  about 20 percent a year, executives said. In 2010, it acquired the Indian  Institute of Job Training, which runs 120 centers that provide courses in  English, bookkeeping, computer applications and other subjects. TeamLease also  plans to build 22 community colleges in the western state of  Gujarat.Sabharwal said his business could grow even faster if the government  changed the labour laws because that would create more jobs and increase demand  for job training. But he is not letting government inaction hold him  back.“If you wait for all the lights to be green in India,” he said, “you  will never leave home.”

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-company/corporate-announcement/teamlease-appoints-paresh-vora-as-president-of-vocational-university/articleshow/11886547.cms 

NEW DELHI: Staffing solutions company TeamLease Services has appointed Paresh Vora as president of its proposed vocational training initiative - TeamLease University (TLU), the firm said in a statement.

It further said the firm has received the final letter of Intent from the Gujarat Government for the University, after signing an MoU last year to set up India's first vocational education university.

"The proposed TeamLease University (TLU) will set up 22 community colleges across the state of Gujarat that will offer two-year associate degree programs in collaboration with employers," it added.

Vora has over 25 years of experience in various sectors that include IT, telecom, software and engineering. Prior to joining TeamLease, Vora was managing director of Dover India Pvt Ltd, a 100% subsidiary of Dover Corporation - a publicly listed diversified engineering conglomerate with 40 platform companies.

He has also worked with companies like Sasken, Epson, Wipro, and Bridgeline, to name a few. He holds a PG Diploma in management from the IIM-A and is a graduate in electrical engineering from IIT, Bombay.

"India is in an education emergency and higher education needs new life forms. Community colleges synthesize access, affordability and employability; we are confident that our proposed University in Gujarat would be replicated across many states ," Ashok Reddy, managing director, TeamLease Services said.

http://www.businessworld.in/businessworld/businessworld/content/Giving-Them-Ear.html 
Companies are following structured exit processes to learn how to improve HR policies
Consider this: HCL Technologies has a three-level exhaustive exit interview to prevent attrition. In addition to this, the company has a retention council which works to retain high performance employees. 

As a part of the exit policy, the company also has a programme called the ‘Exit Management Process’ where 10 per cent of the employees who leave the organisation are called again after a gap of 90 days to know the actual reason for their exit. “We do this for our data accuracy. It also helps in redefining our human resources (HR) policies,” says Ravi Shankar, senior vice-president, HR at HCL Technologies.

There are multi-layered exit interviews designed today, enabling organisations to extract  rich insights from exiting employees on what could be learnt or fixed within the system. “All exit interview data points are analysed systematically and we learn from them,” says Ashu Malhotra, senior vice-president, HR at Tulip Telecom. The HR programmes in the company include mentorship module for all new employees and employee contact programmes such as Sampark and First Impression.

According to a recent TeamLease Services  survey on ‘Impactful Exits’, 92 per cent of employees and managements across all industries follow exit policies very seriously. This went up to 99 per cent in Bangalore and Chennai, establishing Gen Y’s preferences for policies and processes at workplace along with a good pay packet. Another revelation made by the study was the importance of the ‘relieving letter’. Apart from a mere 8 per cent, a majority of the companies expressed apprehension in formalising recruitment without the relieving letter. About 23 per cent of the surveyed companies said that they do not proceed with employment when the relieving letter is not provided. “One of our most important policies is to do thorough background checks before hiring. Therefore, we do not hire without the relieving letter,” says Shankar.

Further, the study revealed that 92 per cent of the companies still favoured manual exit interviews over online, emphasising the reliance on face-to-face interactions. It highlighted the demand for longer notice period: Around 78 per cent of employees stressed on having longer notice periods to help the employees complete pending work, and also allow the companies to contract the right candidate.

According to Teamlease Services, employees are recognising that the labour markets are a small place and ungraceful exits come back with compound interest later. “Nowadays, it is being increasingly observed that employees prefer to have a professional and a clean exit,” says Surabhi Mathur Gandhi, senior vice-president, IT sourcing, TeamLease Services. 
Survey findings also reveal that 39 per cent of HR managers take legal action against employees who violate the company’s code of conduct. 

Exit interviews emphasise more on fixed factors related to job profile, compensation, work environment and company policies as compared to variable factors — which are people specific — such as support and guidance provided by the managers, training, timely feedback, clarity of communication, and so on.

(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 20-02-2012)