Post-stir, HCL 2012 campus hires to go on hunger strike

BANGALORE, INDIA: Three weeks into the nationwide protests against HCL Technologies for not honoring its commitment to on-board them, fresh engineering recruits from the 2012 batch have decided to take a leaf out of Anna Hazare's book.

A section of them from in and around Bangalore have planned to go on a hunger strike at the city's prominent protests nervecentre, Freedom Park, on March 30 "from 10.30 am to 6.30 pm. We invite all the IT/ITeS employees, political parties, trade unions and other citizens to join and support our strike. We demand to give us the date of joining by April 1, 2013", a representation for HCL campus recruits of the 2012 batch stated in a release.

"We are 2012 campus recruits by HCL Technologies Ltd, who received a Letter of Intent (LoI) dated June 4, 2012... we were informed through e-mail that all of us will get appointment letters starting from June 2012. As per our understanding, 8,500 freshers were recruited from various campuses across India, of which a small per cent were allowed to join the company. Around 6,500 of those recruits are still waiting for firm commitment on date of joining from HCL over the last eight months," it further added.

Recently, Prithvi Shergill, chief human resources officer, HCL Technologies, cleared the air in an interview, stating that they were committed to all joinees and had been releasing openings for joining to those received Letters of Intent (LoI). "We anticipate further acceleration in on-boarding from August 2013," he had mentioned then.

In order to hightlight the plight of HCL Tech's 2012 campus recruits, CIOL published a letter by a distraught candidate on March 13. You can read the full letter, which explains the turn of events, here.

Apparently, they have been following up and enquiring with HCL authorities regularly about their date of joining. "Most of us have done our engineering course with the support of educational loans of approximately Rs. 5 lakh. The EMI for repayment is around Rs. 10,000, which we have to start repaying soon. So, it is painful to see that HCL goes on with recruiting new set of people while our future is kept at stake," the representation argued.

Now, the ball lies in HCL Tech's court to expedite the on-boarding process or face more such protests across its centres in India.