Sexual Harassment of Women at Work Place

Landmark Supreme Court judgment on Sexual Harassment of Women at Work Place

In the Landmark case of Vishaka and others versus State of Rajasthan (AIR 1997 Supreme Court 3011), The Supreme Court has issued extensive guidelines to ensure prevention of sexual harassment of women at their work place. These directions were issued in a writ petition arising out of an incident of alleged brutal gang rape of a social worker in a village of Rajasthan.

This petition was filed for the enforcement of fundamental rights of working women under article 14, 19 and 21 of the constitution of India in view of the prevailing climate in which the violation of these rights is not uncommon. With the increasing awareness and emphasis on gender justice, there is an increase in the effort to guard against such social violations; and the resentment towards incidents of sexual harassment is also increasing.

This petition was in Sexual Harassment in the Workplace and was brought as a class action by certain social activits and NGOs.

It has been held by the Supreme Court that it shall be the duty of the employer to prevent the commission of sexual harassment and to provide the procedures for the resolution and prosecution of acts of sexual harassment by taking all the steps required.

Sexual harassment has been described as including such unwelcome sexually determined behaviour (whether directly or by implication) as:

(a) physical contact and advances;

(b) a demand or request for sexual favours;

(c) sexually coloured remarks;

(d) showing pornography;

(e) any other unwelcome physical, verbal or non-verbal conduct of sexual nature.

It has been held that all employers should take appropriate step to prevent sexual harassment: (a) The prohibition of sexual harassment should be notified published and circulated in appropriate ways. (b) The rules/regulation of government of public sector bodies should included rules prohibiting sexual harassment and provide for appropriate penalties. (c) As regard private employees steps should be taken to include the prohibition in this standing orders under the Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act, 1946.

The employer has been directed to initiate criminal action by making a complaint in cases where specific offence of sexual harassment has taken place. He is also required to initiate disciplinary action. The above guidelines are in addition to rights available to women under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993.

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Cure for emptiness in life discovered!!

''This story is about a beautiful, expensively dressed lady who complained to her psychiatrist that she felt that her whole life was empty; it had no meaning. So the counsellor called over the old lady who cleaned the office floors, and then said to the rich lady, "I'm going to ask Mary here to tell you how she found happiness. All I want you to do is listen."

So the old lady put down her broom and sat on a chair and told her story: "Well, my husband died of malaria and three months later my only son was killed by a car. I had nobody... I had nothing left. I couldn't sleep; I couldn't eat; I never smiled at anyone, I even thought of taking my own life. Then one evening a little kitten followed me home from work. Somehow I felt sorry for that kitten. It was cold outside, so I decided to let the kitten in. I got it some milk, and it licked the plate clean. Then it purred and rubbed against my leg, and for the first time in months, I smiled. Then I stopped to think; if helping a little kitten could make me smile, maybe doing something for people could make me happy. So the next day I baked some biscuits and took them to a neighbour who was sick in bed. Every day I tried to do something nice for someone. It made me so happy to see them happy. Today, I don't know of anybody who sleeps and eats better than I do. I've found happiness, by giving it to others."

When she heard that, the rich lady cried. She had everything that money could buy, but she had lost the things which money cannot buy''.

Fwd: Software companies or other outsourcing service providers exempted from human rights?

There is a growing need to draw a fine balance between the hire
and fire policy of the employer and the rights of the workmen.

Termination of employment needs to be in accordance with the Shops and
Establishments Act as applicable to the jurisdiction where the IT
company is situated and the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 (hereinafter
the "ID Act"). The Shops and Establishment Act usually enables the
employer to discharge his employee, other than an employee engaged for
a specified period or in a leave vacancy, from the service by
providing the employee a thirty (30) days notice in advance or such
longer period as may be required under the terms of employment or
salary in lieu thereof.

Cholamandalam Software Ltd. v/s. Additional Labour Court Madras
[(1995) (S) LLJ 78 Mad]

The Hon'ble Judge, thus, essentially took the view that electronic
data processing units had been specifically excluded from the
definition of 'factory' in Explanation II. Therefore, Cholamandalam
Software could not be considered a factory under section 2(m) of the
Factories Act and in turn, could not be considered an 'industrial
establishment' within the meaning of section 25L of the ID Act. This
judgment was later upheld by the Division Bench of the Madras High
Court, after which the workmen of the company filed an appeal in the
Supreme Court. The Supreme Court while distancing itself from the
interpretation provided by the Madras High Court recognized that the
key question is whether the activity of data processing and
preparation of software would constitute a 'manufacturing process' and
further referred the matter to a larger bench of the Supreme Court for
consideration, the decision of which is still awaited.

In view of the pending Supreme Court's consideration, the question as
to whether the software companies or other outsourcing service
providers would constitute an 'industrial establishment' under the ID
Act remains unanswered as of date and there is no clarity as to
whether a software company can dismiss its employees without
compliance with the ID Act if it has more than 100 employees.

From a practical standpoint, the IT industry does not consider itself
an 'industrial establishment' within the meaning of section 25L of the
of the ID Act and follows the 'hire and fire' policy without
compliance with the ID Act of seeking prior state government approval,
taking support from the Division Bench judgment of the Madras High
Court which has held that the software companies are not an
'industrial establishment' and hence are not covered under the
stringent provisions of retrenchment mentioned under Chapter VB of the
ID Act.

Notwithstanding the above flexibility, the software companies will
need to comply with the retrenchment related provisions of section 25F
of the ID Act which applies to all industries (and not only industrial
establishment) and requires that "no workman employed in any industry
who has been in continuous service for not less than one year under an
employer shall be retrenched by that employer until -

(a) the workman has been given one month's notice in writing
indicating the reasons for retrenchment and the period of notice has
expired, or the workman has been paid in lieu of such notice, wages
for the period of the notice;
(b) the workman has been paid, at the time of retrenchment,
compensation which shall be equivalent to fifteen days' average pay
for every completed year of continuous service or any part thereof in
excess of six months; and
(c) notice in the prescribed manner is served on the appropriate
Government or such authority as may be specified by the appropriate
Government by notification in the Official Gazette.

In view of the foregoing, an IT Company may terminate the services of
those employees who have not completed one year of employment in terms
of their respective contract of employment, i.e., by providing a
minimum notice of one month without compliance with the aforesaid
retrenchment provisions.

As regards the employees who qualify as 'workmen' and have competed
continuous service of one year, in cases other than misconduct, the IT
company may terminate their services by providing minimum one month's
notice (or such agreed notice) in writing indicating the reasons of
termination together with retrenchment compensation equivalent to 15
days average pay for every completed year of continuous service in
excess of six months and necessary intimation is provided to the
appropriate labour authority.

--
Adv Mathews Emmanuel

DISCLAIMER:

"The information in this e-mail and any attachment is intended only for the person to whom it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. If you have received this e-mail in error, kindly contact the sender and destroy all copies of the original communication.  More over the legal articles and opinions made herein are not intended to solicit professional work. "

Litigation support tool_ IConvert

IConvert+™

This product is FREE. IConvert+ converts cross-reference files to one or more of the popular litigation support file formats. For example, Summation DII files can be converted to Opticon cross-reference files and vice versa. Plus, IConvert+ is up to 600% faster than our previous converter.

IConvert+ converts files between IPRO Tech LFP and other formats. You can convert to/from:

• CaseCentral
• Custom Data Format (export from LFP only)
• DB Textworks
• Doculex Version 3
• Doculex Version 5
• Documatrix (export only)
• Introspect (export only)
• IPRO Tech LFP
• ETech
• Opticon
• Ringtail
• Summation
• Trial Director
• Visionary

IPRO's IConvert+ includes Electronic File Reporting. This tool reads all the electronic files in any path, and reports a detailed breakdown of file types, tallies of each file type, and the total number of bytes and megabytes those files contain.

A built-in image verification function enables you to check all of the image files in a directory and subdirectories to ensure that they can be decompressed. The verification function supports .TIF, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, and .PDF files.

Note: This product requires installation of Microsoft Dot Net Framework 2.0.

Also note, this program should only be installed on a local drive. Do not install this program on a network or shared drive.

Litigation support tools_IPRO V code

IPRO V-Code™

IPRO V-Code™ is a code-from-image system allowing secure document coding over the Internet or a local area network. The application is a process flow management system that controls the distribution of coding "batches" throughout the indexing process; including logical unitization, coding, QC, and data validation. The system allows the tracking and reporting of the batches throughout each process, the monitoring of productivity and quality, and the ability to create job cost and job estimate reports. The four cornerstones of V-Code are security, quality, flexibility, and performance.

V-Code provides users the ability to:

• Customize at the system, project, and user levels
• Control user access to projects, images and functions
• Secure, encrypted communication packets when used remotely
• Internal mail system eliminates the threat of e-mail virus infection
• Designed around the same high-speed internal database that the IPRO Suite uses
• Images may be located on any IPRO iNet server in any location
• Track batches through Unitization, Coding, and QC
• Validate and clean-up data prior to export
• Navigate by project boundaries, by page, or by image key (Bates™ number)
• Define up to 200 coding fields with customizable data entry validation rules
• Create batches based on image key ranges, document typing, OCR confidence level, or input text file
• Drag-and-drop text from images and pick from selection lists
• Spell checking
• Normalize names for consistency
• Export with various delimiters and date formats
• Data validation reports
• Statistical reports

IPRO View™

IPRO View™ brings leading-edge technology to law firms of all sizes, allowing users to view, search, annotate and retrieve digital images over a LAN, a WAN, or the Internet. Instantly begin your case review with issue coding and search the images for keywords with highlighted hits of OCR results. Users can utilize the IPRO View boundary window for a graphical representation of how the documents are organized and easily link to popular litigation database applications, including Access®, Concordance® or Summation®.

IPRO View offers users the ability to perform a natural language concept search in order to locate documents. This concept search engine performs searches based on the meaning of the word and how it is used in a sentence rather than statistical results. This allows a user to type in the phrase they wish to find, regardless of sentence structure, and receive a return that is significantly more accurate than pattern matching or other conceptual search engines currently on the market. This drastically increases the identification of relevant documents and reduces the time and cost of review.

IPRO View provides a user the ability to:

• Use imaging search features for all cases, large or small
• Highlight, markup, and redact document images
• Perform natural language concept searches
• Issue tag the collection
• Email documents as PDF files
• Utilize hierarchal boundary navigation and proximity navigation to locate images

IPRO eCapture™

IPRO eCapture™ is an electronic discovery application designed to streamline the discovery and processing of electronic data. All processes are controlled and monitored via a central application while distributing the actual work to automated workstations. This design minimizes the human effort required to discover and produce large amounts of electronic data. The product's underlying platform utilizes modular application development, asynchronous multi-threading technology, self aware agents and SQL for optimum performance, accuracy, flexibility, and stability. eCapture can meet the demands of the most difficult and large volume electronic discovery needs; including the ability to increase capacity by simply adding additional processing computers without additional personnel costs.

Data collections are managed at the Client, Project, Custodian and Job levels, allowing the system to manage many different collections for many different clients, all from one location. The Controller allows complete control over any and all jobs, including prioritization, pausing, resuming, cancelling, and reporting. Every task and job is monitored by both the worker software and the Controller. The Controller monitors every worker to verify every task completes. Any worker that goes off-line for any reason has its tasks redistributed so all jobs complete.

IPRO The eCapture system performs the tasks needed for electronic discovery, including: text and metadata extraction, de-duplication, filtering, searching, and export of load formats for data only with native files or various data load formats with images.

Key Features:

• Full distributive design
• Centralized monitoring and management of jobs, workers and queued items
• Automated, self healing worker software
• De-duplication across Client, Project, Custodian or Job Hierarchy
• Run discovery, processing and export jobs simultaneously
• Full reporting on status of jobs, file types, file sizes, errors
• Separate QC Module, allowing QC to be performed while jobs process. features: auto QC, customizable tags and native reprocess
• Processing email post office boxes,individual messages,multiple file types and the extracted attachments
• SQL database and Supports 2003 server and XP

IPRO eScan-IT™

IPRO eScan-IT™ is a software tool that combines electronic discovery, conventional paper scanning, and printing in one application. This powerful tool supports multiple email formats, hundreds of file types, and provides the ability to quickly and easily print electronic files without performing full EDD processing on the collection. Metadata slip sheets may be printed for each file/document from any configurable tray of the selected printer, allowing for color slip sheets containing the file metadata. eScan-IT also recognizes and converts hundreds of industry-standard files based upon their properties rather than relying on their file extensions.

eScan-IT has the capability to process multi-level embedded files, extract text and metadata, create images and perform deduplication of documents. eScan-IT allows for native processing of Outlook®, Outlook Express®, Lotus® and GroupWise® emails (including attachments), and is designed to allow users to effectively filter and cull the data down to only the needed documents. A user is given the ability to easily define Bates™ numbers, code fields, and export to industry-standard database applications, including autoload options for IPRO, Concordance® and Summation®.

eScan-IT provides users the ability to:

• Auto-generate image keys
• Select and print electronic files with metadata slip sheets
• Perform QC on-the-fly with reprocessing of single or batch level documents, even in native formats
• Export metadata, text, and/or original files without creating images
• Preview documents before processing
• Process multi-level embedded objects by document type
• Create TIFFs and/or searchable PDFs
• Print documents without processing

IPRO Copy+™

IPRO Copy+™ is a software application that simplifies litigation copying tasks.  It allows a user to create both paper copies and document images at the same time while utilizing an existing multifunction digital copier.  IPRO Copy+ provides the ability to rapidly copy, image, Bates™ number, and OCR documents in one pass.  An intuitive touch-screen interface allows an operator to easily view, number, categorize, and save documents quickly.

IPRO Copy+ captures binding elements for easy re-assembly and reprinting. It creates TIFF and PDF images, which can be exported to a CD, DVD, or hard drive.  IPRO Copy+ allows an operator to perform quality control and despeckle documents prior to printing, as well as create Manifest Reports and Job Costing Reports.  Each export collection includes a complimentary runtime version of the IPublish Viewer, which allows the recipient to view, annotate, and print the images.

IPRO Copy+ provides users the ability to:

• Scan and capture from a multifunction digital copier/printer
• Easily add, match, and customize Images Keys
• Create OCR results
• Export document images to a CD, DVD, or hard disk
• Capture binding elements, folder names, and document descriptions
• Produce TIFF and PDF file formats

Top 10 outsourcing trends for 2009

Despite the uncertain global economic situation, Tholons, an advisory, investment and research firm for the IT/BPO/KPO industry, maintains that the long term demand for outsourcing will remain unchanged. Though with reduced IT budgets, clients will tend to be more selective and demanding while negotiating service level agreements. This was announced while unveiling the trends in the IT/BPO/KPO sector for 2009. Decreasing margins will push providers to better utilize existing resources, leverage operational levers, implement new technologies efficiently to differentiate themselves and improve service delivery processes. According to Avinash Vashistha, CEO, Tholons, "Service buyers will need to re-assess their outsourcing strategies and implement a better mix of multi-sourcing, nearshore and offshore models, while service providers will look to tap growing domestic markets (such as China, India, Argentina, Brazil and even US) as a means to hedge against the volatility of existing offshore contracts." Following are the top 10 trends that will shape global outsourcing in 2009 says Tholons: -- The worldwide market downturn will impact growth and margins for the first 2-3 quarters of 2009 before picking up and ending the year on a stronger. There will also be a reduction in the number of start-ups in the services sector as the focus shifts on sponsoring hard asset-intensive businesses. Also, most large firms will see a decline in QoQ earnings. -- As Western economies continue to bleed, service providers will shift focus to domestic markets for growth. There is already an increase in focus by vendors towards large and growing domestic markets like India, China, Argentina and Brazil. Fulfillment of customer support and back office services targeted for retail, telcom, and financial services verticals will be amongst the hot spots for providers looking to tap the surging local demand. -- Global economic downturn will lead to increased outsourcing in recession proof industries like healthcare, Legal & education. Other sectors like manufacturing, retail and telecom will have to make a significant shift and reduce cost drastically to survive. These sectors will be attractive industries as they look for opportunities to cut cost. -- Consolidation in the financial sector is inevitable due to the global financial crisis. This will create M&A opportunities which will generate further business for LPO firms. Tholons expect strong growth for LPO firms. The processes will revolve around integration of software applications, data center consolidation and tighter integration of other operational platforms. -- Governments will assume a more crucial role in promoting destinations by developing work force capacity, infrastructure and effective regulatory/ trade policies that are favorable to outsourcing. Cebu City, Shanghai, Beijing, Ho Chi Minh City and Krakow make up the top five spot in the recent Tholons study of Top 50 emerging global outsourcing cities. -- Clients will increase geographic diversity in their service delivery locations as newer service delivery geographies are emerging with niche capabilities. In the coming year, more clients will look for alternatives to India to de-risk their service delivery models that are otherwise geographically limited. Nearshoring as a low cost alternative to domestic sourcing will assume greater importance. In the near-term, the top Indian firms are predicted to expand global footprints and open delivery centers in China, Latin America, Eastern Europe and North America. -- Pricing pressures will result in reduced rates and new measures to achieve cost savings and higher productivity. Client will negotiate hard for every dollar spent, while suppliers will try to protect rates but offer more value added services. Large India-based providers are expected to see EBITDA margins plunge below 20% over the next three years, as they move more IT projects offshore (mostly to India) -- On the M&A front, large deals will slow due to a more tepid market. Challenges related to integration and maintaining liquidity (as opposed to acquisition), will also be primary concerns for 2009. However, firms will continue to look for small tuck-in acquisitions to plug gaps in their portfolios and gain client proximity. Cross-border, inorganic investments are expected to increase in Japan and China with increased market consolidation seeing small to medium players being likely targets.

Wipro eyes multi-skilled workforce

February 19, 2009

Wipro eyes multi-skilled workforce

In an effort to slash hiring and increase efficiency, Wipro Technologies, one of the leading IT companies in the country, is training its employees to turn into a multi-skilled workforce. The Bangalore-headquartered company is providing training to its employees in different domains and technologies to cater to the current requirements as the company is pursuing for integrated deals by providing both BPO and IT services by a single team. "When people are multi-skilled, we will likely have fewer people. Instead of having two individuals being paid lower salaries, we are better off paying more to a single person who is capable of doing both work. This not only improves turnaround times, but also efficiency in operations," Girish Paranjpe, Joint CEO for Wipro's IT business, told Business Standard. With an aim of optimally using its manpower in both IT and BPO operations, Wipro has already signed a few large integrated deals, wherein the company is providing both the IT outsourcing and BPO services by a single team. The company has transitioned some of their employees from each of these two businesses (IT and BPO) to work for such projects. According to Paranjpe, the company has signed up three-four large clients who have outsourced their entire IT and BPO activity to the company. By the end of FY09, the company expects that close to 1,000 people will be deployed in the integrated outsourcing projects. "One of the things we are trying to drive is integrated projects by offering both BPO and IT services. So, it makes more sense to have a fungible team. Much of our new work, we are hoping to do in an integrated fashion — where we will manage the IT application and also carry out the business process for the clients," Paranjpe added. In December last year, Wipro had offered close to 2,000 campus recruits from various engineering colleges jobs in the BPO business till they could be absorbed in the company's IT business. The experiment of putting engineering graduates into BPO work, however, seems to have seen a very limited success as the company found many of them unsuitable for BPO works. Analysts say, Wipro's experiment of putting engineering graduates into BPO work was driven by the company's aggressive quest to make the manpower multi-skilled so that they could be useful as the company signs more number of integrated deals. Of about 1,000 people who had accepted the offers to join the BPO jobs, the company found only about 300 suitable for the job after initial screening. Among those who failed to qualify the initial screening, close to 450 people are undergoing training now, and will be asked to take the test again, according to Wipro's Head of HR Pratik Kumar. Said Kumar, "If today we are looking for engineers for BPO works, it's not because we have engineers who are sitting idle. But because suddenly we found that nature of the job is such, we require engineers as well. It's is not a utilisation issue. It's an issue of the integrated nature of the work which is throwing opportunities." Source: Business Standard