The Labor Department has summoned Amazon to discuss India’s e-commerce major’s recent layoffs. The notice was sent to Amazon India following a complaint by the Nascent Information Technology Employee Senate (NITES), which claimed the company’s layoffs and voluntary redundancy program were unethical and illegal and called for interference. The development follows mass layoffs announced by the e-commerce giant last week. The company has 1,00,000 employees in India.

The letter from the Department of Labor is about talks about the voluntary special program that the company sent out to its employees last week.

Requests sent by happiness india to Amazon India did not provoke any reaction at the time of publication. The copy will be updated once the reply is received.

NITES sent a letter to Union Labor Minister Bhupendra Yadav on November 19 regarding complaints it had received from Amazon workers about being forced to leave the company voluntarily. Last week, the e-commerce retailer sent the VSP to its L1 to L7 employees and gave November 30 to participate in the VSP process. The VSP includes, among other things, 22 weeks of base salary, a one-week base salary for every six months of service up to a maximum benefit of 20 weeks of paid severance pay, and six months’ health insurance coverage.

NITES President Harpreet Singh Saluja said in an interview: “The law of the country is above Amazon’s policies. Under the terms of the Industrial Disputes Act, the employer may not dismiss any employee without prior approval from the relevant government.”

“The company must submit an application to the authorities stating the reasons for such dismissals. Then, after hearing both parties, the relevant government authorities will decide whether the dismissal can be approved or not,” he added.

Saluja further said that the VSP program will affect up to 1,000 Amazon employees in the country.

The company is reportedly planning to cut 10,000 employees, or 3% of its corporate workforce. This is being touted as the biggest layoff in the e-commerce giant’s history. In India, the e-commerce giant plans to hand out pink slips to at least a hundred employees across all departments.

Last week Andy Jassy, ​​the e-commerce giant’s chief executive officer, said the company will continue to fire into the new year as the company goes through its annual review process to find ways to cut costs.

Jassy said, “Leaders across the business are working with their teams, reviewing their workforce, investments they want to make for the future and prioritizing what’s most important to customers and the long-term health of our businesses.”

“We haven’t decided exactly how many other roles will be impacted (we know there will be cuts across our stores and PXT organizations), but each leader will share with their respective teams when we’ve finalized the details.” , he added.

In addition, the company has announced a hiring freeze due to slowing macroeconomic trends. In recent months, several large tech companies have decided to lay off jobs due to a looming global recession and unprecedented global economic situations. According to data from Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks layoffs, up to 1,36,989 employees have been laid off from 849 companies worldwide so far this year.