If you have posted all facts then apparently the bond was introduced with a bad intention to serve the selfish interest of the employer. There was no ground like employer is providing training to enhance the skill, education of employee; hence there is no valid ground.
Show your bond to some competent and experienced service lawyer and give inputs in person.
Record their threats (audio/visual) for use at appropriate time in appropriate forum. There must be many other employees in your kind of situation. You should all be a witness to each other. You can turn the tables.
Many employees left the company obviously as the avenues offered by employer were inferior to those offered by next employers in the market place.
It takes lot of years and monies to be qualified to become eligible for the minimum qualification demanded by the employers in the market. It takes many years and many hours a day ( more than 8 hours of work hours per day as majority of the employers make an employee work for ....hours a day) to become experienced and competent.
If employer has invested capitol in his venture the employee has also invested huge amounts before coming to employer. Interest of employer is selfish as some head count is required to run the company. Employees’ interest is to earn livelihood to support self, family, future.
While it is understandable that there should be some reasonable notice period to enable the employer to arrange for replacement, it is absolute stupidity and nuisance that even those employers who do not provide training are enforcing bond and employer end up signing under duress.
Can you ask a driver who has been driving ambassador to sign a bond if he is assigned to drive a Fiat or for that matter a Toyota.
Instead of burdening yourself you may submit a carefully structured representation to good offices of your appointing authority, MD,CEO, Company Secretary , and conclude that bond was imposed upon the employees, simply for the reason that many employees had left the company for obvious reasons ( make a note of reasons in your diary even if you do not want to spell these in your letter) and better prospects and avenues were available in the market place and to deter and subdue other employees from leaving the company the employees including you were forced to sign the document dated……….titled as…………bond. In fact no training or skill has ever been provided by the company to you to justify the need and ground for bond. Hence the document dated…..titled as………may be treated as cancelled from your end and company should also cancel it amicably. If some sureties have signed the bond let them also cancel it. Let this employer and his team of HR turn red and yellow.
You may mention that you are willing to accept the terms of equality that notice period or notice pay is the option with both employer and employee.
In IT sector while employers have created fronts to support them employees have not. Employees need to form communities and unions; of course constructive ones. They should support each other. Employees in this sector are computer savvy, and can connect to anyone in any corner. The number of employees is huge and strength can be high. Employees can have vote power hence political, financial power, legal power etc.
If employer could twist the state govt. to have waiver of Industrial Employment Standing Orders Act for 2 years (these 2 years are over) employees can also ask to enact rules/laws favoring them.
