Bangalore. The Karnataka State IT/ITES Employees Union (KITU) has urged the Siddaramaiah-led government to reconsider its alleged plan to increase working hours for employees of the IT/ITES/BPO sector. According to the union, the government is planning to increase the working hours for employees to 14 hours per day.
A proposal to amend the Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments Act in this regard was presented in a meeting convened by the Labour Department with various stakeholders of the industry recently, a release said. Labour Minister Santosh Lad, officials of the Labour Department and the Ministry of Information Technology and Biotechnology (IT-BT) attended the meeting, which was also attended by representatives of the union. The union strongly opposed the proposed amendment, which it (the union) said was an attack on the fundamental right to private life of any employee.
The labour minister agreed to hold another round of discussions before taking any decision, the release said. The union said the proposed new bill ‘Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments (Amendment) Bill 2024’ seeks to normalise the 14-hour working day, while the existing Act only allows a maximum of 10 hours of work per day, including overtime. The union claimed the amendment would allow companies to adopt a two-shift system instead of the currently prevalent three-shift system and lay off one-third of the workforce.
During the meeting, KITU pointed to studies on the health impact of increased working hours on IT employees and said, “The Karnataka government in its hunger to please its ‘corporate’ masters is completely ignoring the most fundamental right of any individual, the right to life.” The union said the amendment shows that the Karnataka government does not see employees as human beings who need personal and social life to survive.
Instead it sees them merely as machinery to increase the profits of the ‘corporates’ it serves.
The association urged the government to reconsider and warned that any attempt to go ahead with the amendment would be an open challenge to the 20 lakh employees working in the IT/ITES sector in Karnataka.