Tata Consultancy Services may cut jobs in Finland, impacting staffers who had come on its rolls in January as part of an outsourcing arrangement.
About 290 staffers, many of whom were inducted into TCS following a deal with handset maker Nokia, risk losing their jobs, news reports in the Finnish media have indicated.
In protest, about 100 TCS employees in the city of Espoo and 60 in the town of Salo refused to work today, according to the reports.
In a written statement, a TCS spokesperson said the company has begun the process of ‘collective consultations’ with employee representatives in Finland.
“The consultation process is aimed at streamlining TCS’ operations in selected areas and harmonising them with its global operations. The negotiations are expected to be concluded after six weeks.
“TCS is committed to supporting all potentially impacted employees throughout this process. Until the consultations with employee representatives are complete, TCS will be unable to provide any further details,” the spokesperson said.
Earlier this year, Nokia said it would transfer certain activities and up to 820 employees to TCS and HCL Technologies. Separately, Nokia went ahead and slimmed its IT set-up by up to 300 employees. Nokia also selected TCS as its global IT partner for consolidating its global internal applications suite with a single service provider. As on December 31, 2012, TCS’ Nordic operations (Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland) comprised 5,000 professionals. It renders IT and back-office services to customers such as Ericsson, TDC, ABB, Telenor, NETS and SAS.