The Satyam headquarters in Hyderabad. (AFP)

Hyderabad, March 12: Over 8,000 IT graduates, given offer letters by Satyam but not appointed, have formed an association and requested the company to show them as its employees in its accounts for this financial year.

Members of the Satyam Freshers Union (SFU), formed a fortnight ago, are desperate because by April 1, a fresh batch will graduate from the engineering colleges. The SFU says the new graduates will not only be favoured by domestic recruiters but also receive priority in the matter of H1-B visas for overseas jobs.

The SFU has written to Satyam CEO A.S. Murthy, the board of directors, auditors, Company Law Board and the Union corporate affairs ministry to consider their case on humanitarian grounds.

Its members hinted that it wasn’t the immediate possibility of salaries that was uppermost on their minds, but the need to show themselves as salaried employees on their CVs.

SFU convener P. Varun said the association was not a trade union and had not been registered as one. The SFU is affiliated to the Radical Democratic Corporate Employees Congress, an apolitical organisation that had last month staged a dharna in Hitec City in the cause of the Satyam freshers.

Of the 8,000 SFU members, 2,000 had graduated in April 2007 and 6,000 in 2008. They received their offer letters between October 2007 and May 2008 and have since then been waiting for the company to tell them when they should join.

But after the corporate scam in Satyam was unearthed, the company’s human resources (HR) administration stopped all recruitment. Company officials were today non-committal about the SFU’s petitions.

“It’s not only the in-house scam, the global recession too has hit us like thunder,” a Satyam spokesperson said, adding the company board had decided to put on hold all critical decisions till the company’s fate was decided.

“Hopefully we might take a call on these issues after the issue of strategic bidder is resolved and the company stands on its own after the disbanding of the government-imposed board,” he said.

But SFU members are worried that by April 1, they would lose their “fresher” status in the industry. An IT graduate keeps his “fresher” status till the next batch graduates, or for a few months more if he or she has received an offer letter.