Moonlighting is a kind of practice when someone is taking up a second job during or outside the normal business hours of primary employment. However, in India, as per the Labour Law, if you are fully employed, you cannot have your own business or even work elsewhere.
Most private organizations also have policies that prohibit moonlighting and take strict action against employees who are taking up outside second jobs.
However, some firms do allow employees to work a second job, especially if they are on a contract basis. Recently, Swiggy has announced a new “moonlighting” policy for its delivery personnel, which allows its employees to take up gigs or projects outside of their regular employment at the company.
As per the IT company, post-COVID-19 and the shift to remote working led to a rise in moonlighting practices.
India’s Top IT giants including Infosys, and Wipro have criticized the moonlighting practices and have termed them as ‘unethical’ and ‘cheating’. Also on the other hand, Happiest Minds, Wipro & Infosys laid off employees due to moonlighting.
Recently, Vineet Nayar, founder, and chairman of the Sampark Foundation and former CEO of HCL Tech has said that the employees in the IT industries are impacted by Less salaries and a lack of opportunities.
According to Vineet Nayar the following points on moonlighting in the IT sector:
- The widening gap between the salaries of freshers versus top management.
- The lack of purpose and innovation in the profit-driven culture of IT companies and the growing start-up economy.
Vineet said that “When the internet came into our lives, we resisted big time thinking that our data will be stolen. But it was unstoppable — it came to our desktops, mobile phones, and even watches. And since people couldn’t do anything about it so they learned to use it rather than being abused by it. Moonlighting too is an unstoppable event. You can resist it but you can’t stop it. You need to understand the reasons behind it”.
“For a salary of Rs. 30,000-35,000 where will you stay and what will you do? Especially when employees from tier-II cities are coming to tier-I cities to work, managing expenses gets more difficult. They end up picking gigs outside their jobs to make ends meet, whether it is driving Uber cabs or doing something else,” he said.
According to moneycontrol, he added, “Unless you increase your salaries dramatically which IT companies can’t due to margin pressures, there will be a dire need for this employee to find economic needs to meet his or her ends.”
