Moonlighting in Wipro happened because employees were working two or three more jobs

Moonlighting in Wipro made the company fire nearly 300 employees and for that Wipro is getting subjected to a lot of criticism due to this move. Last month, Rishad Premji, chairman, of Wipro tweeted that he felt that moonlighting was cheating. "As part of transparency, individuals can have candid and open conversations around playing in a band or working on a project over the weekend. That is an open conversation that the organization and the individual can make a concerted choice about, on whether that works for them or doesn't," he said.

But, "there is no space for someone to work for Wipro and competitor XYZ and they would feel the same way if they were to discover the same situation. That is what I meant…so I do stand by what I said…I do think it is a violation of integrity if you are moonlighting in that shape and form."

A growing number of white-collar workers, spanning from tech to banking industries, have quietly taken up a second job — in some cases, a third — as they hedge against worries about layoffs, or take benefit of lesser accountability while working from home.

What Is Moonlighting in tech?

Moonlighting in Wipro or any company is employees of certain companies working two or three more jobs for more income. The term "moon" is used to refer to the extra job as the night job, whereas employees work at their regular job during the day. While no law bars employees from working at two companies simultaneously, certain companies have a clause that says a conflict of interest may arise if their employees are caught working in the same domain while being employed with them.

Moonlighting in Wipro took place and everyone went crazy but it is not completely prohibited under the law in India. Why? Because it is not explicitly mentioned anywhere in the law books. The term is adopted by a multitude of people to define the practice of having more than one job. However, there's a catch. Section 60 of the Factories Act 1948 prohibits the double employment of adult workers in factories.

Moonlighting could lead to termination:

Moonlighting allows employees to work second jobs, outside normal business hours of the primary job, under certain conditions. Due to the ease with which it enabled many employees to work on additional side projects, the moonlighting policy became very popular among remote workers during the two years of the pandemic. Moonlighting or taking up another assignment from another employer, either part- or full-time, is not a new phenomenon. It stated that the transition to remote work had seen an upsurge in moonlighting.

This can offer major issues to our business, including the possibility of data and sensitive information leakage, etc. It further mentioned that in offer letters too, the employee cannot take full-time or part-time employment at any organization without the consent of Infosys. IT firms have a different perspective on freelance work than some of India's newer startups. Many IT companies have developed monitoring systems to measure employee productivity.

Swiggy recently announced a new work policy that will allow its employees to take on additional employment, long as it was done outside of business hours and didn't interfere with their productivity at the food delivery company. Swiggy clarified that the push was not to conflict with the company's business interests, but rather to pave way for the professionals to engage in passion projects and social works.

Wipro fired employees but at what cost?

While Premji says that he sticks to his views on moonlighting and that he was unfazed by the number of hate emails he was receiving over the issue, there is a section of people on social media who say that firing employees for working two jobs was wrong. "No one likes to work