The Ministry of Labour and Employment has sent a notice to Amazon and NITES (Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate), the IT employees union, for a joint discussion on November 23, over the alleged unethical and illegal layoffs by the company in India. 

NITES had written a letter to Union Labour and Employment Minister, Bhupender Yadav, on November 19 condemning the layoffs started by Amazon in India and asked for the Minister’s intervention into the matter. The organisation had said it has received complaints from employees of Amazon that they are being forced to quit the company voluntarily.

A letter by the office of the Deputy Chief Labour Commissioner read, “the undersigned proposed to hold discussion in the matter on 23.11.2022 at 1100 hrs in this office. You are therefore requested to attend this office with all relevant records in the matter either personally or through an authorised representative on the aforesaid date and time without fail.” 

Harpreet Singh Saluja, President of NITES, in a statement said, “We are thankful to the Ministry of Labour and Employment for the prompt action initiated to safeguard the interests of Amazon employees. We are looking forward to justice for employees.” 

This is a sigh of relief for Amazon India employees for the time being. We are hoping that the unethical Voluntarily Separation Policy introduced by Amazon will be scrapped by the Government authorities, he added. 

NITES had said that the company has sent a detailed Voluntary Separation Program (VSP). “Livelihoods of thousands of employees and their families have been made vulnerable. The company has also given a deadline to the employees till November 30, 2022, to complete this process,” it had written in its letter. Reportedly, Amazon has announced that the company would let go of 10000 employees globally. 

Amazon did not respond to businessline’s queries about the notice by the time of publication. 

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