It's surely quite common for employment contracts to forbid taking a second job in the same business type.
In Wipro's case the employees were working for competitors not just doing the same kind of generic work; I'm pretty sure that most companies would object to that rather strongly.
I’ve had employment contracts (financial services) that forbade any other employment at all.
I wasn’t surprised by this. If your contract is one for a professional, knowledge worker type role and you’re paid according to your results or output, then the company wants you to focus all of your working attention on it. If you’ve got mental capacity to do more work, do it for them, get rewarded accordingly.
Nope, not common at all. And the word competitor could be every other company out there. Unless every company demands to see tax returns it will be difficult to verify anything from taking after-school classes/tuitions, stock trading....may just push people to take up contract work or freelance for the most part.
FTA: "Rishad Premji, executive chairman of Indian IT services giant Wipro, revealed on Wednesday that the company fired 300 employees for moonlighting with its competitors."
The problem was not that they did work on the side, the problem is that they did it for the competition. The CEO notes it would have been different if the employees had been working on side projects of their own.
Would love to see these sort of policies be applicable for senior members who sit of countless boards of other companies as well.