The hearing has been postponed to May 16.
The clause in the IT services provider’s job offers restricts employees from
joining ‘named competitors’ or any of Infosys’ clients directly for six months after leaving their jobs.
The communication from the ministry had been addressed to Krish Shankar, Infosys’ group head for human resources, and Harpreet Singh Saluja, the president of Pune-based labour union Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate, which had filed the complaint.
The clause states that an employee shall not accept for six months an employment offer from “named competitors” such as TCS, Wipro and HCL Technologies, among others, if the new job involves working with a customer with whom the employee has worked in the preceding 12 months during his/her stint at Infosys.
It also says that for six months an employee should not accept employment offers from a customer with whom he/she has directly worked in the preceding 12 months.
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Infosys, in response to the development last week, said it is a standard business practice in many parts of the world for employment contracts to protect confidential information of clients and other legitimate business interests.
The conditions are fully disclosed to all job aspirants before they decide to join Infosys, and do not prevent employees from joining other organisations, according to the statement.
The IT industry has been battling an acute talent crunch for the last few quarters. The attrition rate at Infosys hit 27.7% for the quarter ended March 31, while the metric stood at 17.4% at bigger rival Tata Consultancy Services.
