An employee of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in Chennai has alleged that she has been transferred within the organisation without being offered any reason for the same, simply because she chose to speak up. When the employee, who has been a good performer over the years, approached the labour court complaining of being victimised and discriminated against at the workplace, for raising her voice against injustice, she was transferred back to her original project.
In 2019, the said employee had approached the labour court alleging that she had been sexually harassed during an out-of-turn face to face appraisal meeting, which she had been made to attend against her will. She alleged that the ICC failed to investigate the matter in the way it should have, and had concluded that there was no proof to substantiate her allegations, even though she had provided them with all the required evidence. She then sought a fair and just re-investigation.
The concerned employee is appealing to the court to order her employer not to change the terms of her service till the case is concluded. Activists believe she is being harassed simply because she took the issue— regarding inconsistencies in the way the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) had handled her sexual harassment case— to court.
Now, according to the employee, she is being punished at the workplace for dragging the Company to court. She is sure that these internal transfers are a form of retaliation by her employer. As a consistently above-average performer, who had been appreciated for her work by her superiors, she did not deserve these unnecessary movements. However, last month, while all the others— who were working on the project of which she was a part—continued in the same project even during the winter break, she alone was transferred to another project, which clearly implies ‘selective discrimination’.
Since TCS follows the practice of performance-based appraisals, her transfer from the project would simply ‘nullify’ her performance during the appraisal period.
Interestingly, when the employee’s case had made headlines and was widely discussed in social media, her manager had accused her of ‘organising’ a social media campaign.
