India IT: 60000 contractors being eased out
By Bala Shah

Every large company in India employs IT contractors or ‘vendor-supplied’ techies.  These contractors provide specialist skills and can step into the IT Department for terms as short as 3 months.  Some contracts last for years. The contractors are always paid a premium but the trade off is less job security. Some techies prefer contracting as they get bored at one site.

DNA is now reporting that as many as 60,000 of these contract or ‘vendor-supplied’ employees have been let go in India.  As these are contract tech workers, their entry and exit is relatively low key and does not show up in most records of companies.

According to the DNA report such contractors have been let go by Google, HP, Dell, SAP and Microsoft operations in India.  Accenture India had started cutting down the contractors in its IT division since June, 2008.  Indian tech firms, which hire fewer contractors, are relatively unaffected.

Google India told DNA that it would be trimming its contract work force.  Microsoft India said it would keep its options open.  Dell says it would reduce it contractor head count.  IBM, Sun, HP, SAP, Accenture refused to confirm or deny such sackings in India.