Trump Blamed for Job Losses as India Tech Workers Face Cuts

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Swapana Bhosale was stunned when she found out earlier this month she was losing her job at tech services provider Cognizant Technology Solutions in India. Layoffs in the business are rare, particularly if employees are in the middle of client assignments like she was.

“Pulling people out of projects to sack them is unheard of in our industry,” said Bhosale, who demanded to be fired rather than resign so she can take legal action.

The 36-year-old sees an unusual culprit behind job losses in the country’s outsourcing industry: U.S. President Donald J. Trump. She thinks his immigration policies are contributing to early cutbacks, aggravating losses that come from automation and softer customer demand. Cognizant and peers like Infosys Ltd. and Wipro Ltd. won’t disclose how many jobs they cut, but it appears the industry is going through one of the largest retrenchments in its three-decade-plus history.

Hyderabad and Kolkata, thousands of engineers who have been axed or face dismissal are banding together on social networks and WhatsApp groups to decry Trump’s policies. They are discussing the creation of the first industrywide IT labor union, which may foreshadow broader changes in a $110-billion business at the heart of India’s economy.

“People are angry,” said 25-year-old Pankaj Kumar Singh, a software analyst who was dismissed from Cognizant’s Kolkata operation after two years at the company. “They feel Trump’s policies have a lot to do with the firings.”