The end of a
58-day strike by a section of Air India pilots last week, with none of their
demands conceded, demonstrates two things. The first is the limits, if not
futility, of industrial action even by the most specialised and highly-trained
workforce when business conditions, both internal and external to the
organisation, aren’t too good. The second concerns the reasonableness of
demands, in the eyes of the management as well as the wider public. In this
case, the strike involved only pilots flying on the national carrier’s overseas
routes and not their domestic sector counterparts belonging to the erstwhile
Indian Airlines, which has since 2007 been merged with Air India. But the
strike by the 424 pilots — out of Air India’s total of 1,500-plus — was enough
to cause the state-owned airline some Rs 650 crore in losses and ground much of
its wide-body aircraft fleet used for international operations, that too in the
peak travel season.
If despite all
this, the agitation yielded nothing for the pilots though, it only points to
the current market realities — of a loss-making airline with accumulated debts
of almost Rs 45,000 crore, whose survival hinges on a Rs 30,000 crore
taxpayer-funded bailout over the next eight years that is subject to certain
milestones being met. By striking at such a crucial juncture, the pilots were
clearly overestimating their own strength and underestimating the dire
financial straits faced by not just Air India, but the entire airline industry.
No management with its back to the wall would have tolerated such action that
ultimately benefitted only rival carriers, which merrily hiked fares. The
losers were Indian workers in Dubai or Doha having to pay through their nose to
fly home, Air India, and the pilots themselves, who are now practically seeking
only reinstatement and withdrawal of legal proceedings against those whose
services were terminated during the stir.
That raises the
legitimacy of the original demand itself. The pilots’ agitation was not
primarily over salaries or allowances, but about denying their colleagues now
flying single-aisle aircraft in the domestic sector, the right to even train on
the new Boeing-787 Dreamliners being acquired by Air India. In other words,
they wanted to reserve the privilege of long-haul flights — guaranteeing more
flying hours and, hence, faster promotion from co-pilot to commander rank —
exclusively for themselves. This, the Government could obviously not have agree
to, especially after the Indian Airlines-Air India merger that made it technically
difficult to discriminate between the crew of the two previously-separate
domestic and international carriers. Even the general public would be loath to
such guild-like arrangements intended at maintaining the monopoly of particular
trade. While one may sympathise with strikes by blue-collar contract workers
over pay parity with regular employees, the same yardstick cannot be applied to
those drawing monthly salaries of Rs five lakh or more.
The Government is right in denying squatting privileges to the erstwhile
Air India pilots merely because they were the original inheritors of a
corporate logo.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article3617547.ece
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