Considine said that IT workers have long been expected to work incredibly long hours and have not seen regular pay rises for some time.

"To some extent people have become institutionalized by IT companies' spin on things, such as 'We can't afford a pay rise and if we gave everyone a pay rise we'd have to retrench people', but in reality these IT companies are very profitable; it's just that the profits all go offshore to the parent company," he said

"The profits are inflated by the companies' reliance on not paying salary increases where they are due, not replacing people when they leave and sharing the remaining workload among diminished workforces."

Performance-based payment, which is very common in the IT industry, is also of concern to Considine.

"This model is presented as 'fair' but that is fictional, because pay budgets are determined in advance by the financial people. The reality is that there is no money in the budget to give an increase no matter how well the employees perform. The company just transfers the blame to the individual employee," he said.