Employee unions in India are fighting alleged layoffs at Cognizant, the massive IT consulting firm, according to The New Indian Express.
The report states:
- State IT employee unions in Karnataka and Chennai have alleged that Cognizant is executing mass layoffs after benching nearly 18,000 employees across India.
- Cognizant has allegedly asked the employees to resign as they are unable to secure projects.
- Karnataka State IT employee Union (KITU) is calling all Cognizant employees to not tender their resignations under management pressure.
- KITU plans to register a complaint with the state labor department.
ChannelE2E has reached out to Cognizant for comment. The New Indian Express's article did not contain a comment from the IT consulting company; the newspaper said it reached out to Cognizant but did not receive a a reply at deadline.
Related: Technology Industry Layoffs – Complete Job Cut List
Targeted IT Consulting Layoffs, Staff Cuts Spread Worldwide
The alleged Cognizant layoffs reinforce a recent job cut trend across the IT consulting and IT services sector. Amid the coronavirus pandemic and associated economic fallout, businesses such as Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG and PwC have confirmed layoffs.
Cognizant had the added challenge of a recent ransomware attack that cost the IT consulting firm millions of dollars in lost revenues and corrective expenses.
Still, Cognizant and many rivals making job cuts remain global IT consulting giants -- with diversified revenue streams across cloud, big data, analytics, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and software development services.
Cognizant Acquisitions, Coronavirus Challenges
Cognizant described how it was navigating the coronavirus revenue challenges in April 2020. But the company has also remained in acquisition mode -- acquiring Workday cloud partner Collaborative Solutions in May 2020; Salesforce cloud partner Lev in April 2020; and the French operations of Salesforce specialist EI-Technologies in February 2020.
