Tragedy of IT Professionals!!

Reality behind hiring and firing: To create a reserved army of labor!

A shadow of recession is also felt in the IT sector of India. A lot of highly paid middle class IT professionals (who don't think that they are workers!!) are getting affected from the impact of economic slowdown and recession in European countries.

Impact of this slowdown is reflected in the life of middle class people because money companies are going for job-cut to save their profit.

Now, even if recession may not be there, but still many IT companies time by time terminate some of their employees to "maintain" (!!) the standard of their work force!!

It is what IT companies tell to their employees and we all are told till now...

Now, from the point of Marxist analysis, the situation is totally different.

Now we see what the reality of job-cutting is, and maintaining the work "standard" of employees. It can be understood with a very simple example. Suppose a company need 100 workers to some work, so it hires 100. After some time it terminates 10 out of them on the name of "not up to mark work quality"!! Now, there remain only 90 workers. So, what will be the situation of these remaining 90 workers? As 10 workers were fired due to "not up to mark work", remaining workers will feel a pressure to maintain their work quality "up to mark". Why these workers feel pressure? Because they don't have any guarantee of employment to earn high wages. What does it mean? It means that they have to work overnight to maintain the “quality of their work”, attend office in weekends, take less leaves etc. It means, indirectly they are forced to do more work in the same wages. So, practically these 90 workers will be doing the work of 100 workers or in many cases more than 100 workers.

So, in one statement we say about management process, "Hire 100 workers, terminate 10 out of them on the name of 'bad performers', and then let the work of more than 110 workers done by remaining 90 workers." This is the reality of reserved or surplus labor force (either physical or intellectual) in any capitalist system.

As quantity of intellectual work cannot be measured and there is no proper way to judge day to day productivity of intellectual labor. In this case IT companies cannot put direct supervisory pressure on their workers to increase productivity, as it is done in other industries. So termination of “under performers” and announcing it in front of other workers is a good, and only, way for these IT companies to develop fear and create an indirect psychological pressure on their workers to regulate the productivity. This also disciplines workers, and profit generation goes on smoothly and uninterrupted.

This indirect pressure on the workers, which is not clearly understandable to them, is one of the reasons why a lot of working population around the world is suffering from the decease of depression. And, now this pressure is also experienced by newly developing middle class of our country, because impact of recession in developed countries like Europe and USA is also impacting the employment of IT professionals in India.

In the words of bourgeoisie “philosophers” it is called management of labor (to make profit). And this is the truth behind success of businessmen like Narayan Murty, Ajim Premji etc. But many workers ask why no one talk about it? The answer is simple that present education system, social institutions and other sources of knowledge and propaganda try to create an illusion in the mind of people to hide the reality. It is a reason why individual “successful” personalities who are making great profit, are promoted by whole media and newspapers, and praised by bourgeoisie ideologue so that they become role-model for all workers and workers keep dreaming to become Murty-Premji. This illusion is necessary for the capitalist class and capitalist society to exist. This is a way how intellectual class of the society is so very well politically fooled.

It is also true because under capitalist production relations intellectual production in the IT industries is exactly same as in the other production industries. So the social position of these intellectual workers (IT professionals) is almost same as other physical workers who are working overnights 12 to 16 hours day and night to earn very little, not enough to maintain themselves and their family. Except intellectual workers are paid more wedges than physical laborers due to higher “value” of their work. But, the tragedy with this section of the society is that neither they have much political awareness nor their class character allows them to join working class in their struggle for liberation of whole mankind from the slavery of capital.

There is a lot more to be exposed about IT industries. This is just a corner of the real picture of the conditions of working class, but there is a whole picture to unfold.