Verizon’s India Arm Fires 1,000 Employees: Report

By Little India Desk | December 13, 2017

Verizon Data Services India has fired around 1,000 employees across India, according to a IT employees union called the Forum of IT Employees (FITE). Verizon has confirmed the layoffs but has not revealed the number of people who have been sacked.

“As Verizon consolidates its strategy, we can scale, compete, and continue to be successful. Verizon’s IT, including Verizon Data Services India, is transforming into an engineering-centric, technology organization. The transformation entails rationalizing roles, which has an impact on headcount,” Verizon said in a statement.

“We are doing role rationalization not to meet a specific number but to match the talent with the requirements of the business for its future,” it said.

Verizon will be laying off 14 per cent of its employees at VDS from Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, according to the Union of IT and ITES Employees (UNITE).

Verizon has offices in Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and New Delhi.

“We have come to know that VDS India has targeted to retrench 993 of its employees in band 7 to band 3 through forced resignation,” UNITE’s convener Alagunambi Welkin told the Hindu. Some of the senior managers were reportedly escorted out of the building by security personnel on Dec. 12.

The local units of the United States-based organization employ about 7,000 employees in Chennai and Hyderabad alone. The establishments were started in India to support the company’s domestic and wireless business in the United States as well as the global enterprise solutions business.

It has been speculated since early 2017 when the merger of Verizon, AOL, and Yahoo! took place that 15 per cent of global employees would be impacted.

The FITE has condemned the “illegal terminations,” saying that the complaint calls received were from Chennai and Hyderabad.

According to online forum thelayoff.com, a popular website for discussing layoffs globally, the employees have been offered 14 months of severance pay. Most layoffs were among the group of people with over 12 years of experience, it said.

Pink slips were also reported to have been handed to 2,500 Verizon employees in the United States this year after the merger. Verizon did not confirm this information.

Employment in the information technology sector will be bleak until March 2018, Experis IT Employment Outlook Survey said in October this year.