TCS layoffs row: Karnataka seeks clarity on reported termination of 12,000 employees
"Yesterday we got information that TCS has laid off 12,000 employees. Our department has called TCS officials just to have a consultation to know the reason," the minister told reporters in Bengaluru according to news agency PTI.
He said that sunrise industries have been exempted from labour laws, but with conditions. "We have kept the sunrise companies outside the ambit of labour laws, and for the past five years, we have been giving them exemption year after year. But there are conditions attached," Lad noted.
(Also Read: All of a sudden, 12,000 people…': Karnataka labour minister calls TCS layoffs 'alarming')
"If they want to lay off somebody, they have to give us information. Accordingly, we are talking to them," he added.
TCS has reportedly indicated that it plans to reduce around 2% of its global workforce, about 12,261 employees, this year, primarily affecting middle and senior-level staff. As of June 30, 2025, TCS had a workforce of 6,13,069 and added 5,000 new employees in the April–June quarter.
The move is part of the company's broader realignment strategy to become a "future-ready organisation," with a focus on AI deployment, technology investments, market expansion, and organisational restructuring.
Meanwhile, the Karnataka State IT/ITeS Employees Union (KITU) has raised a strong objection to the layoffs. The union has filed a complaint against TCS with the Additional Labour Commissioner G Manjunath.
In a statement, the union said it is demanding legal action against the company's management for violating provisions of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, and for not complying with the conditions mandated by the Karnataka government concerning the reporting of employee status.
Minister Lad further said that another reason for summoning TCS and other companies was to inform them that the state government is not accepting their request to extend working hours to 9–10 hours a day.
"If employees are ready to work, then we will consider the request as per the guidelines and grant permission. But this is subject to employees' willingness. Those who reject the permission will not be forced to do it,' Lad clarified.
He also said implementing longer working hours isn't practical given the time lost in traffic.
"As a minister too, when I see the proposal of increasing working hours, I feel it's not scientific. Increasing hours might be feasible for a week or ten days, but not throughout the year given Bengaluru's traffic," Lad explained.
He added that while the industry may claim longer hours benefit both employers and employees, such measures can't be imposed universally.
"Employees who agree to increase working hours must give written consent, but we cannot implement it across the board,' the minister said.
(With PTI inputs)
(Also Read: Karnataka railway clerk suspended after ignoring passengers for 15-minute phone chat, video goes viral)
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hindustan Times
3 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Social Security updates: What to know about security pin requirement, paper checks vs direct deposits
The Social Security Administration (SSA) recently clarified a confusion regarding the introduction of their new Personal Identification Number (PIN) feature. This modification has come following criticism from advocacy groups regarding the reach of such an improvement. Social Security updates: What to know about security pin requirement, paper checks vs direct deposits(REUTERS) PIN no longer mandatory The SSA had earlier declared that from August 18, recipients would either need to go online or visit an in-person office to get their personal PIN. This is necessary to conduct basic tasks like address updates, tax form requests, and claiming status checks. Although aimed at improving security measures, this will significantly boost the number of field visits made by recipients per year. Many individuals, such as Kathleen Romig from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, raised issues in the interest of those residing in rural or other inaccessible areas. The group even questioned whether the action was entirely necessary, given the considerable additional effort and pain it would entail. SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano received a letter from The American Association of Retired Persons, which indicated that many individuals with disabilities, those with a retired background, or those with a lack of access to technology may not be able to participate in the same. The spokesperson for the organization has now confirmed that the PIN is no longer mandatory, as reported by News Nation. Beneficiaries can continue to use the 'my Social Security' tab or existing identity verification methods. Although a regulatory filing for the same hasn't been made yet, the SSA plans on amending it soon. Direct deposit mandate Adding to the list of recent changes introduced by the SSA, starting September 30, no paper checks will be issued to beneficiaries. All recipients must now receive their payments through direct deposit or online transfer. The move aims to save costs and reduce fraud associated with mailing checks. Beneficiaries are advised to update their payment mode to receive benefits in a due manner. They must enroll for the same before the deadline to avoid payment delays. – With inputs from Stuti Gupta
Hindustan Times
3 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Cambodia and Thailand to hammer out permanent ceasefire in Malaysia meeting
By Rozanna Latiff Cambodia and Thailand to hammer out permanent ceasefire in Malaysia meeting KUALA LUMPUR, - Cambodia and Thailand's top defence officials began a meeting in Malaysia on Thursday to finalise a permanent end to hostilities following a violent five-day border conflict that ended in an unconditional ceasefire late in July. The Southeast Asian neighbours saw the worst fighting in over a decade last month, including exchanges of artillery fire and jet fighter bombing runs that claimed at least 43 lives and left over 300,000 people displaced on both sides of the border. Fighting continued despite diplomatic interventions from China and Malaysia, chair of the regional bloc ASEAN, calling for restraint. The leaders of Cambodia and Thailand only came to the negotiation table when U.S. President Donald Trump told them that tariff negotiations would not continue unless there was peace, Reuters exclusively reported. Cambodian Defence Minister Tea Seiha and Thailand's acting defence minister Nattaphon Narkphanit are due to meet at Malaysia's Armed Forces headquarters in Kuala Lumpur. The two countries will establish guidelines to resolve border disputes, restore trust between their military forces and agree to a ceasefire with measures to minimise tensions and protect civilians, Nattaphon said in a statement before the talks. The conditions were formulated during three days of talks between senior officials in Kuala Lumpur and are to be finalised on the fourth day in the presence of observers from China and the United States. Thailand and Cambodia have quarrelled for decades over undemarcated parts of their 817 km land border, which was first mapped by France in 1907 when the latter was its colony. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
Indian Express
3 minutes ago
- Indian Express
OpenAI's long-awaited GPT-5 model nears release
OpenAI's GPT-5, the latest installment of the AI technology that powered the ChatGPT juggernaut in 2022, is set for an imminent release, and users will scrutinize if the step up from GPT-4 is on par with the research lab's previous improvements. Two early testers of the new model told Reuters they have been impressed with its ability to code and solve science and math problems, but they believe the leap from GPT-4 to GPT-5 is not as large as the one from GPT-3 to GPT-4. The testers, who have signed non-disclosure agreements, declined to be named for this story. OpenAI declined to comment for this story. GPT-4's leap was based on more compute power and data, and the company was hoping that 'scaling up' in a similar way would consistently lead to improved AI models. But OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft and is currently valued at $300 billion, ran into issues scaling up. One problem was the data wall the company ran into, and OpenAI's former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever said last year that while processing power was growing, the amount of data was not. He was referring to the fact that large language models are trained on massive datasets that scrape the entire internet, and AI labs have no other options for large troves of human-generated textual data. Apart from the lack of data, another problem was that 'training runs' for large models are more likely to have hardware-induced failures given how complicated the system is, and researchers may not know the eventual performance of the models until the end of the run, which can take months. OpenAI has not said when GPT-5 will be released, but the industry expects it to be any day now, according to media reports. Boris Power, head of Applied Research at OpenAI, said in an X post on Monday: 'Excited to see how the public receives GPT-5.' 'OpenAI made such a great leap from GPT-3 to GPT-4, that ever since then, there has been an enormous amount of anticipation over GPT-5,' said Navin Chaddha, managing partner at venture capital fund Mayfield, who invests in AI companies but is not an OpenAI investor. 'The hope is that GPT-5 will unlock AI applications that move beyond chat into fully autonomous task execution.' Nearly three years ago, ChatGPT introduced the world to generative AI, dazzling users with its ability to write humanlike prose and poetry, quickly becoming one of the fastest growing apps ever. In March 2023, OpenAI followed up ChatGPT with the release of GPT-4, a large language model that made huge leaps forward in intelligence. While GPT-3.5, an earlier version of the model, received a bar exam score in the bottom 10%, GPT-4 passed the simulated bar exam in the top 10%. GPT-4 then became the model to beat and the world came to terms with the fact that AI models could outperform humans in many tasks. Soon, other companies were catching on. The same year, Alphabet's Google and Anthropic – which is backed by Amazon and Google – released competitive models to GPT-4. Within a year, open-source models on par with GPT-4 such as Meta Platforms' Llama 3 models were released. Along with training large models, OpenAI has now invested in another route, called 'test-time compute,' which channels more processing power to solve challenging tasks such as math or complex operations that demand human-like reasoning and decision-making. The company's CEO Sam Altman said earlier this year that GPT-5 would combine both test-time compute and its large models. He also said that OpenAI's model and product offerings had become 'complicated.'
