Agilent Technologies won’t cut pay, forces vacation

NEW DELHI: In a novel way to ease the pressure on resources, Agilent, the world’s largest measurement and testing software company, has made a two-day leave mandatory every month in India for its 1,800 employees. Over and above that, the company has announced a two-week vacation effective December 20. 

On December 17, the $5.2-billion company announced a retrenchment of 800 jobs globally. Instead of tendering pink slips, Agilent India’s senior management executives are being asked to take a two-day ‘vacation’ every month. Junior employees have been asked to take a day’s off in lieu of their earned leave. “Those who don’t have paid leave left will have to take a leave without pay for those particular days,” Agilent India country manager Venkatesh Valluri said. 

Tech cos go slow on campus hiring; TCS, Infosys buck trend

MUMBAI: Top four IT companies made 58,000 campus offers for the financial year 2009-10, down by 2,000 from the current year. Recruitment for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys has gone up by nearly 2,000 each, a large chunk of this has come from tier I and tier II colleges, while this has gone down for Satyam and Wipro. 

Campus recruitments for the year usually start in May-June of the previous year. IT companies are given first preference as they hire in greater numbers than other sectors. Engineering colleges, traditionally the recruitment bastion for IT companies, have felt most of the brunt of this drop in recruitment. 

However, the decline in demand was not reflected in the pay packets as salaries being offered for 2009-10 recruits remain flat compared to 2008-09, which saw a hike of at least 10% across the software companies. TCS and Infosys offered Rs 3.15 lakh per annum to engineering graduates which is the highest salary for 2009-10. 

TCS to hire PhD students from IITs without interview

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) CEO and Managing Director S Ramadorai said that the company would hire computer science PhD students who have graduated from any Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in the country without any interviews for the next five years.

Companies likely to cut planned salary hikes

New Delhi: Here is a bad news again for employees as many companies are likely to move away from the planned salary hikes in 2009. Indicating further reduction in work force, a recent Mercer survey says companies have conceded that workforce reduction would occur and hiring would become more selective and skill- based.  

Of hundreds of human resource and finance professionals in India surveyed, 83 percent believe that their companies have planned to look closely at holding down the level of compensation increases and salary increases are likely to be lower than originally planned in 2009. But surprisingly, very few Indian companies surveyed are considering the more drastic step of freezing 2009 salaries at 2008 figures, with 19 percent of survey respondents saying that such a step is likely and 24 percent saying a salary freeze is somewhat likely.

Half of the Indian respondents say that their company is likely to reduce previously budgeted 2009 bonus payouts for performance in 2008. "It is now time to plug gaps where mediocre performance has been rewarded with high pay. Companies need to drive robust performance management and adopt a performance-based reward strategy. Employees should increasingly focus on acquiring new skills and developing an entrepreneurial mindset," opined Padma Ravichandar, Country Leader, Mercer Consulting (India). 

The survey also focuses on human resources and says that in an environment in which they are asked to operate with reduced resources, HR continues to be considered core strategic to most companies' business. 27 percent of the respondents said their companies plan to maintain their investments to improve the overall HR services. 

Layoffs in USA - Dec 19th: Update

Sovereign Bancorp and Electronic Arts announce 2,000 job cuts

Sovereign Bancorp and video-game designer Electronic Arts announced on Friday that they are cutting a total of 2,000 jobs, laying blame on the recession.

Barclays Capital fires Lehman Brothers staff

Barclays Capital, the investment banking branch of Britain's Barclays Plc. is dismissing a report it was delaying the layoffs of 3,500 employees, who have lost their jobs as part of the company’s takeover of Lehman Brothers. The New York Post said Barclays was delaying with the layoffs until after the New Year celebration.

Indefinite Layoffs At CAT Mossville

Caterpillar is indefinitely laying off more than 800 workers at its Mossville plant starting February 23rd.

Aspyr Confirms Layoffs

Aspyr Media has confirmed it's laying off an unspecified number of staffers due to the economic downturn.

Citizens Financial lays off 900

Citizens Financial Group announced 900 layoffs today in their commercial, retail and global transaction services divisions.

Glam Media cuts Salaries to Avoid Layoffs

Sovereign Bank announces 112 layoffs

Parker Hannifin announces layoffs in Alliance

Silicon Valley jobless rate up amid thousands of job cuts

The unemployment rate in the San Jose region rose to 7.2 percent in November as the number of non-farm workers dropped by 4,300 from a year ago.

Oracle India rules out salary cuts

Source: IT Examiner

Allen Mathew, senior director in human resources, Oracle India has ruled out salary cuts in the company.

Mathew said, “We don’t go outside to recruit and we don’t go to consultants for recruitment. We run our own recruitment agency. So we have a very different model. We don’t have requirement at this point of time. We only find people in specific domains to hire, but it is difficult.” He added, “There are no salary cuts or job cuts as of now. Coming to our pay cycle, we have got last year’s bonus. December will be the latest period. And we are still hiring. So far, we don’t have any such move in our company”.

However, he is unsure about the future. He said, “We don’t know what will happen in three years or five years or one year down the line. In the near future I don’t see anything like that.” On an optimistic note, he spoke about the situation in 2004 when Oracle started mergers and acquisitions (M&A) of other companies.  At that time everyone said that M&A won’t work for Oracle as there will be a great number of job cuts and layoffs.

Mathew said that difference of culture could be of great significance in M&A. He said that Oracle had acquired multicompanies and was quite successful. He also gave an example of cultural adaptation. At one company they had acquired, the cafeteria had no non-vegetarian food on the menu. Now all cafeterias in Oracle offer non-vegetarian food. Mathew used this example to show that Oracle could adapt to other companies’ policies and merging was not only in business but also in culture.

However, employees of I-flex solutions limited, now Oracle Financial Services Software Limited, have a different story to tell. They said that the vendors in the company were in the process of being sent out. The senior employees in the C and D bands got 10 to 15 per cent salary cut. The company has also cancelled bonus for the year. The company’s staff in the prime sourcing division was given a pay cut of about 50 per cent and was required to work only for three hours a day. The old I-flex management supposedly wanted to layoff the entire staff in the division. However, the Oracle management decided against it as Oracle feared that it would give an impression that the M&A was a failure.

Employees also said that the company had cancelled perks such as transport charges. Earlier, 50 per cent of the employees' transport charges were borne by the company. The company has also cancelled free snacks for the staff in the evening. Free food for its support staff also has been cancelled. The recruitment procedure is said to have become more rigid following M&A. The employees’ version gives a completely different picture to that given by Mathew.