According to sources who spoke to India Today TV, the Ernst & Young (EY) office in Pune, where a teenage employee is believed to have died from overwork, has been operating without state authorization that sets work hours since 2007. The federal authorities are already looking into the incident.
Following the May death of a junior banker at Bank of America, there has been much discussion about the need for improved measures to protect workers in high-pressure occupations from deteriorating physical and mental health. Last week, JPMorgan established a new position to address these issues.
Labor Commissioner Inspects The EY Office
Following an inspection by his team, Maharashtra’s Additional Labor Commissioner Shailendra Pol stated that the EY office in Pune, a city in western Maharashtra, was operating without the required registration required by the state’s Shops and Establishments Act.
Adults are only allowed to work a maximum of nine hours per day and 48 hours per week under the law.
According to Pol, who spoke to Reuters on Tuesday, “The company applied for a registration with the labor department only in February 2024 and we rejected it because it had not applied since it started this office.” EY has been given seven days to explain the gap.
The Maharashtra Shops and Establishments Act governs work conditions, including employee rights, working hours, salaries, and safety. A Shop Act license is a legal requirement under this legislation. To operate lawfully, a license from the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) is required.
Precautionary Measures
The labor department is investigating concerns about the purported worker exploitation. If working more than eight hours a day is necessary, authorization from the manager of the relevant company should be sought.
In addition, laptops ought to have a central logout mechanism. This system indicates that the employee’s laptop logs out automatically after eight hours.
On March 18 of this year, 26-year-old Anna Sebastian Perayil began working as an audit executive at EY India’s Pune office, where he remained till July 19. Anna passed away on July 21 from a heart attack.
Her mother said in a letter to Rajiv Memani, Chairman of EY India, that her daughter suffered from stress and long work hours. But the company refuted the accusations.
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