Nature of Work, Quality of Employment and Working Conditions in ICT Sector: A Case of India

By: Balwant Singh Mehta (India)



Learn about the Project

India has emerged as a major global provider of information technology (IT) and information technology enabled services (ITeS) in recent years. The growth of IT-ITeS (referred ICT in Indian context) is contributing significantly to export earnings and major source of incremental employment opportunity for educated youth. It has strong spillover effects on the other sectors and has shown capacity to earn foreign exchange and increase participation of female. This makes ICT sector special for Indian economy. There is an urgent need to explore the nature of work, quality of work, working conditions and gender participation of ICT sector in India. To capture these aspects of ICT (covering both IT and ITeS) a primary survey based study is proposed, which will help answer such policy questions by examining the impact of ICTs on the Indian labour market in two different segments, IT and ITeS of ICT industry.

Research Question(s)
Does evidence from the ICT (IT and ITeS) industry in India suggest that the promotion of ICT in developing countries leads to:Skill polarisation i.e. skilled workers with better knowledge of use of ICTs have better career and work opportunities, leaving the rest of workforce in dead-end, low-paying jobs. Quality of employment or decent job: The better job conditions which leads to development of this sector. Gender neutrality i.e. ICTs reduce the need for physical labour and create white-collar jobs. Women, therefore, would find better employment prospects due to diffusion of ICTs. Flexibility i.e. ICTs reduce coordination costs, allowing firms to rely on external labour markets and, therefore, promote greater labour market flexibility. Autonomy at work i.e. ICTs ensure greater access to information among employees, therefore helping decentralized decision-making and giving employees’ greater autonomy at work. Following are the general and specific objectives:

General Objective
To examine the nature and structure of employment in ICT (IT-ITeS) sector in India and its impact on work and labour market.

Specific Objectives
Examine the Nature and Structure of work in ICT sector
(The nature and structure of ICT industry can be studied by looking detail profile of industry and workers. The ICT industry encompasses a wide range of jobs- high end (software development) to low end (data entry to back office processing), similarly profile of workers and their skill requirement varies)

Examine the quality of employment and working conditions in ICT sector
(The quality of job and working conditions can be examined by detail enquiry of labour flexibility, flexible time and place, job type- part time/temporary/contract jobs, mobility, working hours, wage/salary, individualisation, job security/ social security benefits and union or associations etc, the working conditions can be looked further by training, promotional rules, health ailments and emotional factors like separation from their family and households etc.)

The gender participation and discrimination in ICT sector
(A detail questions related to wage/salary discrimination, promotional discrimination, job profile- low-end jobs, job security and social security benefits (medical benefits, crèche for kids, maternity leave, health ailments and other family related questions etc.) will give the picture of women participation and their discrimination)

Findings

The socio-economic profile of the sample ascertained that most of the workers were mainly from urban, upper class/caste, higher or middle income families and from metros or big cities; very few of them belonged to rural areas or towns. Majority were young, single and highly educated with graduate or higher degree of qualification. ILO’s decent work framework was used to examine the nature and quality of employment and working conditions in ICT sector.

The concept includes four inter-related dimensions as given below:

1. Employment and Income generation
2. Working Conditions
3. Social Protection/Security
4. Social Dialogue

The ICT sector is highly skill oriented as the share of technical workers increases with the level of employment. However, the nature of employment and working conditions in this sector are more women friendly, with high participation of women in employment. But women are mainly employed in low skilled jobs at the executive and middle level. Furthermore, the returns to skills show very high returns for technical workers in comparison to non-technical workers. The sector reported a high prevalence of contractual jobs. Although the workers reported highly regularised status of employment with most of them working on 1 to 3 years contract, they could be fired in case there were no projects or due to other reasons like nonperformance or global slowdown, etc.

The salary or income in this sector was very high in comparison to other traditional services and manufacturing sector. However, on the other hand, high level of inequality was observed within and between the IT and ICT segments. There was, however, no discrimination in the salary between male and female workers. As far as working conditions were concerned, both favourable and non-favourable conditions coexisted, with less number of annual leaves, high working hours, shift based work and safety issues in night shifts for women in ITeS, high work pressure, target oriented jobs leading to high mental pressure and other health problems. Favourable conditions included high performance incentives, pick and drop facility, purified drinking water, cleanliness, refreshments, higher education and training facilities.

On the downside, the industry offered low level of social security and protection with only 21% availing social security benefits. Contractual appointment, high attrition rate and frequent job hopping in this sector made employment situation most vulnerable. Lastly, the sector completely lacked any kind of workers’ association or union; only 4% were reported to be members of any association or union. Employers discouraged formation of any union or association. There was also very little organised dialogue between employers and employees.

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