The Kancheepuram labor court admitted an appeal by an employee from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) against the ruling of the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) on a sexual harassment complaint filed against her manager. The incident allegedly happened in the United Kingdom where the employee and her immediate supervisor were on deputation. 

When this incident was reported to TCS Internal Compliance Committee (ICC),  the committee had Conducted probe meetings in a biased fashion, provoked the complainant on Emotional grounds and questioned the motive of the complainant .This response of ICC  is shocking because the idea of an ICC in an organization is to be empathetic with the complainant instead of threatening the people coming forward to register complaints against transgressions. ICC further, tried to influence the external Member during the proceedings which negates the very purpose of having an external member in ICC.  The TCS ICC also violated the closed-door proceedings by not booking proper conference rooms for enquiry and casually passing the name of the complainant in an unsealed envelop.

The Complainant has accused the ICC of TCS for being biased in spite of the tremendous mental and physical stress she had to face in UK as well as after returning to Chennai, leaving her with no option but to approach the labour court. 

The TCS website claims to have 36.1% women employees in a workforce of 436,641 in 149 countries, including its subsidiaries. With these many women on-board the proceedings of the current ICC raise question about the normalization of the sexual harassment habit in the workplace and the security of women who come forward to complain.

UNITE (Union of IT and ITES Employees) demands that the case filed in the labor court must be fast forwarded and the complainant should be delivered justice immediately along with dismantling the current ICC and installing in place a new trust-worthy ICC.

UNITE also demands that The State government along with state women’s commission take this case as the precedent and constitute an investigation committee about the functioning of ICC in TCS and in all IT companies.

UNITE further appeals to all IT companies operating in Tamil Nadu to practice zero tolerance against any form of harassment or sexual misconduct, take swift action to conduct fair investigations against any transgressions, while taking measures to protect the women complainants and all who come forward to report transgressions and to monitor the situation closely to any avoid any criminal misconduct.