After TCS, Tata Steel sacks 38 employees over unacceptable practices; 3 for sexual misconduct

Steel behemoth Tata Steel has sacked 38 employees over misconduct in the past fiscal year, Tata group Chairman N Chandrasekaran said during the company’s annual shareholder’s meeting.

Chandrasekaran said, “We have taken action against 38 people who have been dismissed by the company. Thirty-five were fired for unacceptable practices bordering on ethical issues and three for sexual misconduct.”

The Chairman of the Tata group noted that these lapses were brought to the notice of the company after receiving several whistleblower complaints related to these individuals. He said, “We received 875 complaints last fiscal, and 158 were related to whistleblowers, 48 were regarding safety and 669 on HR and other behavioural issues."

The Chairman also encouraged employees to speak up about misconduct at the workplace. 

“Employee can express his or her concerns. It could be on sexual harassment or a practice they noticed at the company. We are encouraging people to record their grievances,” said Chandrasekaran.

"One of the things that gets discussed in all our companies, not only in Tata Steel, is safety. Our goal is to achieve zero fatality across the group. One action we have taken is that every board meeting starts with a safety update. Second is that we have created a grouping, where CEOs of all top companies have been brought together to drive zero fatality across businesses. This has been in function for the past two years," Chandrasekaran added.

A bribe for jobs scandal reportedly worth over Rs 100 crores was uncovered at Tata Consultancy Services, another Tata group company, in the past few weeks.  A whistleblower at the company wrote to the company's CEO and COO revealing that the global head of RMG, ES Chakravarthy, and other top HR executives had been accepting commissions from staffing firms in lieu of jobs at the IT services company. Over six officials involved in the scam have been sacked by the company. The IT major also banned six staffing firms after the issue came to light.

“We found six employees who did not follow the ethical conduct and while we cannot quantify what favours they got, they suddenly behaved in a way that favoured certain firms. So, we have banned six such employees and six Business Associate (BA) companies. Investigation is pending on three more employees,” TCS Chairman N. Chandrasekaran told shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting last week.

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