Now-a-days Engineers and MBAs change the company frequently to get better and better job opportunity and better and better annual package. Attrition rate in most of the private companies is 20% and more. It means every one of five recruited by a company leaves the job of that company in one year to join some other company , either due to better offer or due to uncomfortable work in the existing company or the company removes him due to poor performances.
But in all such cases companies save payment under Gratuity Act because minimum service for payment of gratuity to an employee is five years. In all such cases employees are losers and the employers are gainers. As a matter of the fact there are less than 50 out of 100 employees recruited in a particular company are more than five years old. Advocate should file a PIL or any other case in any court of law to give relief to such job changers.
Gratuity Act is very old and it needs amendment in the present change scenario. Since the private sector employees are not well organized and particularly job changers have no support of any union or political party this anomaly of the law could not come to light. Since the public sector employees are organized and there are very few cases of leaving of job by an employee in less than five years span of time. As such employers in public sector do not get such gain and the loss to employees in government sector is almost insignificant.
I however request highest officer President of India to look into the matter and guide HRD Minister or Finance Minister or the Law Minister to bring out necessary changes in the Gratuity Act to ensure that gratuity is paid to an employee even if he has served for a month or else it should be made transferable like Provident fund. It is worthwhile to mention here that such job changers face a lot of difficulty in taking back even accumulated contribution towards PF account from many newly developed companies and lastly they discard it. Obviously new brand companies are depriving genuine right of employees and there are hardly a few people who seek remedy from Indian courts because legal remedy is more costly and time consuming than the amount involved in such sacrifices. However it is also true that Job seekers who are to make their career excellent do not have time and also cannot afford legal action.
Danendra Jain, Ganaraj choumuhani , Agartala-799001
24.05.2010
