Grappling with labour issues ever since its merger with Indian Airlines in 2007, Air India will see more than 17,000 of its employees, and that of its subsidiaries, elect their union leaders in July.
A four member committee — comprising former secretary at ministry of labour Krishna Mohan Sahni, retired chief labour commissioner SK Mukhopadhya, former additional secretary to the government Ajit Nigam, and former vice-chairman of the Railway Section of International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) Raja Sridhar — is expected to submit its observations by May-end following which the elections will take place by July.
“The mandate of the committee is to conduct elections and recognise the unions in the airline. It will have to determine the unions and its members that are eligible to contest the elections, the constituencies and finalise the procedures,” said a senior Air India official, who is also a member of the airline board.
Air India currently has several large and medium-sized unions. While some of these unions are recognised by the airline management, others are not.
For instance, the Indian Pilots’ Guild (IPG), which represented pilots of erstwhile Air India, was derecognised by the then civil aviation minister, Ajit Singh, after they went on a 58-day strike in May 2012 to protest against the promotion procedure and induction of erstwhile Indian Airlines’ pilots in training programmes to fly Dreamliners (Boeing 787) aircraft.
The four-member committee, headed by Sahni, had earlier placed two suggestions: To have three unions — one each for Air India, the MRO division Air India Engineering Services (AIESL), and the ground handling unit Air India Air Transport Services (AIATSL); or to have five unions. It was the second suggestion that was finally accepted.
Under the second proposal, two unions were earmarked for Air India — first for pilots and, second, for other workers, such as cabin crew and ticketing staff. While, the carrier’s MRO subsidiary, AIESL, was allowed to have two unions, the ground handling unit, AIATSL, was allocated a single union. The top management of the airline, in line with the committee’s second suggestion, wants to rationalise the number of employee unions in the company to five from the existing 15 to bring in efficiencies with respect to addressing human resource-related issues and facilitate quicker decision-making, the senior airline official added.
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