Unscrupulous Bastards

Posted on January 25, 2004 4:29 AM EST

I just learnt something when chatting with my family in India. My sister works as a lecturer at a polytechnic in Bangalore. Her employers are holding her original certificates. If she needs the certificates for any reason (Eg: to apply for a passport), she can borrow them against the security of her salary. Meaning, they won't pay her salary until she returns her own certificates to their safe-keeping. Apparently, they keep the original certificates with themselves to hold her tied to the job. Is this a lawful practice? I think not!

Recently I learnt that there was some inspection by officials from the education ministry at her college. My sister was instructed to tell them that she earned more than what she is actually being paid. That means she is being underpaid. This certainly is not lawful. What unscrupulous bastards!

My sister feels powerless to do anything against them for fear of losing her job. Although she passed out with distinction in her engineering course, she was unlucky in the job market. She studied in a new college that was not yet on the lists of campus recruiters. So, she did not get recruited from the campus. And she passed out just when the software bubble burst across the globe. So, no companies were recruiting freshers at that time. In fact, many companies had delayed taking in students they had already recruited from campuses in previous years. When recruitment of freshers started about 18 - 24 months later, my sister did not belong to the latest batch that passed out. As most of us know, companies recruit freshers only from the last batch that passed out. After much searching and difficulties, she landed this lecturer's job and those guys are underpaying her and making her lie!

Talking of the software bubble, at the height of the software economic boom, there were other kinds of unscrupulous characters in action. These included such worthies as body-shoppers with shady exploitative practices, candidates who lied and cheated with false certificates, experiences, etc., software institutes who charged exorbitant amounts to offer less-than-good-quality training and worst of all, employers who charged YOU to let you work on their projects. Yes! The demand for experienced software professionals was so high that some fly-by-night operators charged fresh inexperienced students to work for them and gain experience on software projects. And there were people willing to pay and work just to gain the experience. Contrast this with authentic, above-board companies that pay even their trainees and interns.

Unscrupulous Bastards!