:: Editorial

Air India strike has to end now

Sept.30 : The wildcat strike by Air India’s highest-paid executive pilots, which entered its fourth day Tuesday leaving the national carrier crippled, has simply no justification. These pilots stopped work demanding restoration of cuts in their productivity-linked flying allowances and other perks, despite minister of state for civil aviation Praful Patel making it clear that Air India’s chairman had on Sunday put the proposed cuts on hold — just a day after they were announced. On the face of it, therefore, the executive pilots — some of whom earn up to Rs 6.5 lakhs a month — have no ground to agitate at all. They claim they have not got their allowances for three months, a point that the airline’s management has gone to lengths to refute, but it is evident that they are not prepared to see the larger picture — the hard times that not just Air India but airlines in almost every corner of the world are going through.

People across this country and much of the world are being forced to make sacrifices in the current economic climate: is there any particular reason why those at the pinnacle of the aviation sector in India should be exempt? The airline’s pilots accuse the management of taking the national carrier to the verge of bankruptcy in order to benefit private airlines, citing discontinuation of certain profit-making routes (such as Calicut-Bahrain, which yielded Rs 100 crores annually), privatisation of ground handling and extravagant bulk purchases, but none of this is any justification for severely inconveniencing thousands of passengers without notice, including small children and babies put through hardship, besides disrupting holiday travel plans for so many in the midst of the festive season.

Having said that, the pilots’ strike cannot be seen simply in the present context: there is a long history of vacillation by successive governments over decades in dealing with the multiple unions that have plagued the national carrier. These have been some of the most difficult unions to deal with in India, particularly the ones representing highly-skilled professionals such as pilots, flight engineers and ground engineers. Whenever any of them, or even the more malleable cabin crew unions, would go on strike, the government would go behind the back of the airline’s management and strike a deal with the strikers. This happened with the cabin crew strikes of 1987 and 1990-92, and with the longest-ever strike by flight engineers in 1993, when the government went behind the backs of MDs like M. Mascarenhas, S.R. Gupte and Yogi Deveshwar respectively. In contrast, when Air Chief Marshal P.C. Lal, then heading the airline, was given a free hand by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to deal with the pilots’ strike in 1970, he managed to crush it easily, as did J.R.D. Tata with a similar strike in 1974.

Over the years, it has been government intervention in the airline’s day-to-day operations that has allowed the unions to gain advantage: something that the executive pilots have been taking full advantage of today. In the long run, if the national carrier is to function efficiently, competitively and provide quality service to passengers, both the government and the airline’s management need to regain their moral authority to deal with the growing indiscipline among the unions. Air India is a national asset providing an essential service to millions of our countrymen: all concerned — government, management and employees — should leave their egos behind and ensure that nothing is allowed to disrupt flight operations. Only then will the Maharajah’s flag be able to fly proudly again.