EMPLOYEMENT WITH MNCs

Something that happened to a friend of mine compels to make this post.

My friend works for large TELCO as a senior Manager. His wife, about 8 months back left a local firm she was working for a long time as a commercial executive, joined the branch office of a Japanese IT company excelling in Peripherals as a back office Executive. The nucleus family of the husband, wife and their kindergarten going daughter lives in an apartment in downtown Cochin. True to most of the youngsters of the day, my friend and family belong to the ‘upward mobile Indian’ citizenry.

A month back my friend’s mother got involved in a car accident. On their way to a famous pilgrimage center, the car in which she was traveling with her daughter and son-in- law met with a nasty accident. She was badly injured in the skull and underwent surgery soon after, at a nearby hospital. Later, she was shifted to a major medical facility at Cochin and she is undergoing recuperation, after swinging right and left many times, giving anxious moments to my friend and family. She is saved mainly duly to the timely, selfless and continuous intervention of a surgeon friend of us.

Due to mother being hospitalized with serious up and downs, my friend and his family were required to attend to her at the hospital. Both applied for leave from the job. Whereas my friend got the leave sanctioned, it was not allowed for his wife. The Japanese company manager told her that she hasn’t completed her probation of one year and the leave cannot be sanctioned. If she has to go, she could resign and go, she was given the ultimatum and was forced to resign from the job.

This sets me thinking. At one end we are talking about humanity, corporate Social responsibility and complete happiness of employees etc in modern companies, and at another end, we see such drastic steps being taken by corporates. Instead of consoling the employee for the great difficulties that she was undergoing, inhumanly, she was given the boot. It looks like in this Japanese company nothing else but performance mattered. ‘Productivity and profitability at all cost’ looked to be its mantra. How very sad!

This is a true outcome of the globalization that we are undergoing. These global giants and economic super powers had entered into India to capture the market with the sole aim of making money and nothing else. All they want is Indian market share. They are not worried about the ‘bloody’ Indians. The attitude that these companies management displays to its employees is that to slaves. ‘We are bloody paying you, shut up and work the way we tell you, else, get lost’ is the dictum. These companies do not have any compassion for its Indian employees. They are here to make money and the numbers matter to them, nothing else.

Amply, we see the pressure of these MNCs telling on its workforce in India. Money is there but happiness is not there. It is work, work and work. These guys are stressed out a lot. They have time for nothing. Life swings between the agony of slavery and the ecstasy of dollars! Medical problems (both mental & Physical), family problems (the warfare at home resulting in split homes), divorces, single parenting, alcoholism, etc are on the increase. In the end, these MNC employees will need all the extra money that they had saved to resolve crisis in life such as above.

Is this what we call life? Does it really make any sense to you?