EY Staffer’s Death: Pune Office Found Operating Without Required Permit

Mumbai: The office of Maharashtra Labour Commissioner has said that its inspection revealed that the Pune office of Ernst & Young (EY) lacked the state’s labour permit that regulates working hours for employees. 

EY has been in the middle of a raging controversy because of the death of 26-year-old audit executive Anna Sebastian Perayil allegedly due to backbreaking work pressure. The death of the young executive sparked a national debate about toxic work culture and backbreaking workload in high-pressure jobs.   

The EY’s Pune office has been operating since 2007 without a labour permit. 

“The company applied for a registration with the labour department only in February 2024 and we rejected it because it had not applied since 2007 when it started this office,” Reuters quoted Additional Labour Commissioner Shailendra Pol as saying. 

In a statement late on Tuesday, EY said its global member firm SRBC & Co. LLP, was inspected and it’s “providing its full cooperation to the Ministry of Labour in its investigation.”

Perayil’s mother wrote a letter to EY India’s chairman Rajiv Memani claiming that her daughter had died due to the “overwhelming workload” while working at the EY office in Pune. “She worked late into the night, even on weekends, with no opportunity to catch her breath,” the letter said.