National carrier Air India will now have a total of five unions against the more than 15 now, a move which would help the management to deal more effectively with the employees.
After the completion of the recently held elections, the carrier will have two recognised trade unions while its subsidiaries will have three. The elections for the unions took place on August 19-20 and the results were announced on August 26. About 85% of the airline’s 13,000 employees voted in the elections.
Initially, the plan was to have one union for pilots and another for all the other employees, including cabin crew and customer facing employees, said a senior Air India official. “However, since the pilots didn’t file nomination and participate in the process, so both the main unions will now be dedicated towards other employees of the airline, excluding pilots,” the official said.
The airline will, however continue to talk with senior commanders and operational heads of Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) and now derecognised Indian Pilots Guild (IPG) to resolve issues relevant to pilots. “From what we understand, there was a lot of fragmentation among pilots which was the main reason why they (pilots) were not able to nominate people for unions. The reality is that pilots issues are too important for the airline to ignore. We hope that both ICPA and IPG come together in future and work together to highlight issues of the pilots,” the official said.
While, Air India is set to have two unions, its subsidiaries Air India Engineering Services Limited (AIESL) and the ground handling unit will have three unions between them. AIESL has been earmarked two unions — one major and another minor.
Those unions that got more than 50% votes were recognised by the management, while there were some unions that ended up with over 35% votes, which prompted the airline to form major and minor unions.
The five unions are expected to have 50 members while each of the unions will have four regional bodies (North zone, South Zone, East zone and west zone), which will comprise eight-10 members each, and a central body that deals with the airline’s corporate office that will also have eight-10 members. “The plan now is to set up a regular structure for negotiations with unions. This should be in place in another two-three months. Both the management and the unions will need to work together for the benefit of the airline,” the official said.