'My Management Did It!'

Our aviation columnist Anjuli Bhargava gives a ringside view on what transpired in the sector in the last few days.

The past week has been one of the most rewarding ever since I started writing on the aviation sector. Never have I laughed so much at the turn of events and the emotional — and often melodramatic — responses of people to them.

It started with Jet Airways Chairman Naresh Goyal and Kingfisher Airlines (KFA) Chairman Vijay Mallya — otherwise hostile and bitter rivals — suddenly appearing one day arm in arm announcing they had entered some kind of alliance that would help them save — hold your breath — Rs 1,500 crore a year! The next day, Jet Airways announced it was sacking 1,900 employees — which, of course, is no laughing matter — and then expressed surprise that people were linking the firing to the alliance.

The sacking predictably provoked tearful protests from the employees, and the first to spring to the defence of hapless staffers was Raj Thackeray, who announced that he would not allow any Jet flights to leave or enter Maharashtra unless all the staffers were taken back. TV channels helped whip up hysteria by showing several weeping employees on national television, stirring everyone into action. The employees were so excited and encouraged that one of them went so far as to say that this had become a global issue. Another pointed out that this was being done to them just a few days after they were made to sing their corporate anthem, “We are a family”.

Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel — who had until then sensibly said there was little the government could do in a private company’s internal matters — suddenly promised under pressure to intervene at a personal level. He also subtly blamed the lay-offs on inaction by P Chidambaram and Murli Deora and added he was “hurt” by their lack of support to the aviation sector. Deora shot back saying his oil companies were also hurt by Jet and other airlines’ failure to clear the dues.

Moreover, he also attacked Naresh Goyal for the firing, saying he could not understand how this man could ask so many people to leave his company just before Diwali! “I don’t know what country he lives in,” said Deora, arguing that anyone in India would not take such an action just before such a major festival. The good minister appeared so fixated on Diwali that it appeared the sacking would have been fine after Diwali.

Meanwhile, at the India Aviation Summit — the timing of which can only be described as unwittingly comical — in Hyderabad, the two airline barons were inseparable at all events (in one golf cart, apparently) and finding one without the other was proving to be a bit of a challenge for journalists and for their employees. Former Jet staffers who had left to join Kingfisher were getting the jitters as rumours of a possible merger grew stronger. They were apparently worried about “what Goyal would do to them”.

The global meltdown took a backseat as, under pressure from TV channels, almost everyone was forced to react to the Jet sacking. Oscar Fernandes, the labour minister —who presumably woke up from his slumber —, came (a)live on TV and said he had asked his chief labour commissioner to give him a report on the sacking. He said he would have the report in — what can only be called record time — 1-2 hours. The labour ministry also called a meeting on the crisis, which was now acquiring national proportions.

Prakash Karat was seen on one of the channels looking quite morose and saying this action of Jet’s needed looking into. CPI (M)’s Sitaram Yechury, meanwhile, flashed some kind of manifesto of issues that his party was intending to take up the next day in Parliament. This included pressing national issues like the nuclear deal, inflation, terrorism and — you guessed it —...the Jet lay-offs!

Raj Thackeray held an agitation in Mumbai where he exhorted the Jet staffers to learn Marathi and urged them not to eat or drink anything till they got their jobs back, they wisely ignored.

Feeling a bit left out of the action, Praful Patel issued a statement that no employees in Air India would be retrenched. He learnt a few hours later — to his horror — that Chairman and Managing Director Raghu Menon had, however, gone ahead and said that they were putting in place a scheme to allow Air India employees to go on an unpaid leave for two to five years and that this could be considered for 15,000 employees. That, incidentally, would be around half his airline strength. This also shocked me as just two weeks ago, in his Mumbai office, Menon had assured me that neither his staff numbers (33,000) nor his wage bill (Rs 6,500 crore, no less) were a worry for him at the moment. That’s despite his losses threatening to edge closer to $1 billion this year.

However, the icing on the cake really was Jet Airways Chairman Naresh Goyal, who went live on many channels Thursday night (with Executive Director Saroj Datta standing sympathetically by his side) and said he was taking back all the employees that had been fired. He swore on his dead mother that he wasn’t under any kind of pressure (political or otherwise) to do this.

He, as chairman, apparently learnt of the sacking of 1,900 employees from the newspapers and was, he said, as shaken as the employees. He said on TV — his hand on his heart — that he himself came from a modest background, so he understood the “agony” they were going through. He himself had not slept for two days, had a severe headache and high blood pressure. He said he would “not be able to live as long as he lives”.

He clarified he was taking them back because he could not do this to his “family” as its “father” and he “cannot see tears in their eyes”. He said he, too, had a 19-year-old daughter, implying many of the employees were like his own daughter. Many Jet and Kingfisher staffers told me the next day that they had tears in their eyes having spent the night laughing their guts out over Goyal’s act on TV.

The grapevine, of course, said that no less than Sonia Gandhi and the prime minister had themselves intervened on what had, in a matter of days, become a “national crisis” and said Goyal had to take the staffers back before Parliament convened the next day. Praful Patel came on TV to say he had asked Goyal to take action within 24 hours and claimed that his “personal intervention” was responsible for Goyal’s volte face, although Goyal maintained that he had spoken to no politicians.

Mallya, meanwhile, managed to extricate himself from Goyal’s arms and flew off to China for a Formula One race. And that brings us to the end of one of the most exciting weeks in India’s aviation history. The story however is far from over….