HCL faces legal action from 'hired' freshers

The on going protests across the country against one of India's largest IT companies, HCL Technologies, seems to take a legal turn.

With Uttar Pradesh police intervening in the case, the graduates are now to take legal recourse instead of holding street protests.

The Noida District Magistrate has told HCL Technologies to come out with a plan of action by next week to on-board freshers who are protesting against the company for not giving them joining dates yet.

The Case

Last Monday, some 80 engineers gathered in front of HCL Technologies' office in Noida where the top brass of the company sits, including Vice-Chairman and Joint Managing Director Vineet Nayar and Chief Executive Officer Anant Gupta.

According to these engineers, the company hired around 5,000 freshers in September 2011 from various engineering campuses across the country. They were given Letters of Intent to join the company in a few months. But more than a year later, they were still to get their joining dates.

The freshers who were protesting were from colleges namely Gandhi Institute of Technology and Management (Hyderabad), Andhra University, Maharashtra Institute of Technology (Pune), Vellore Institute of Technology (Tamil Nadu), and Sastra University (Tamil Nadu) protested at the gates of various offices of the company.

What HCL is Saying

The company said it is an option offered to the hired students, who can join the company immediately as the vertical has vacant positions. And, even if they fail the test, the LoI will still hold for the HCL Tech vertical and they can join the company once positions get created, a company official said.

"We have openings for around 400 people there and few may open up soon. We have asked these freshers to join us there at the same positions as they were offered in the LoI (as Graduate Engineer Trainee)," Nitin Pande, Vice-President - HR, HCL Technologies, told Business Line.

He said the company will be able to decide on taking in more candidates by August and will decide on a timeline to on-board these freshers as, by then, HCL would have finished its business planning.

But the unemployed freshers were furious over the delay and demanded to know why the company had given the LoIs if it did not plan to on-board them. The company now plans to announce the dates of joining in August 2013.

Protesters takes on HCL through Social Media

The protesters are making best use of Social media platform and raging protests on the company's fanpages and other social media links with raging comments.

According to media reports few of these comments were like:

"Thanks to forming a group in Facebook, the affected persons could assemble here to put pressure on the company to recruit us," said an agitator. The agitators were from Chennai, Erode and Karur, and from remote places in Andhra Pradesh, he said. "We could not go to any other company for a job, as we wasted nearly a year," he said.