Aviation, banks, insurance call strike on Sept 29

India's business community will do well to keep its diary clean for September 29, when the country's aviation, banking and insurance systems appear certain to come to a halt.

Employees of public and private sector banks, except foreign banks, will be on strike. As will the those of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), the four state insurance companies, regional rural banks and co-operative banks. They are protesting against the government's plan to facilitate the merger of public sector banks to create large banks.

In another development, the talks between the government and the employees of Airports Authority of India (AAI) today failed to resolve the strike called by airport employees against the privatisation of the Delhi and Mumbai airports.

If there is indeed a strike, about 50,000 passengers will be stranded across the 127 airports and none of the usual 1,000 flights will take off. One of the biggest sufferers will be business travelers, who account for about 60 per cent of the overall air passengers.

The bank strike is being supported by all the major bank employees and officers unions including All India Bank Officers Confederation, National Confederation of Banking Employees, All India Bank Employees Association, All India Bank Officers Association and Bank Employees Federation of India.

The parleys between the government and airport employees came just a day after the government started examining the technical bids submitted by six bidders to participate in the privatisation and modernisation of the two airports.

However, the strike is not expected to affect the navigation and air traffic control operations. The strike will be by about 25,000 airport employees, who undertake services like aircraft handling, passenger handling and aircraft services.

Airlines are putting in place contingency measures to limit the impact of the strike. Some of the airlines have even asked the government permission to deploy their own staff to undertake the task otherwise handled by AAI employees.

'We are trying to limit the impact by deploying our own employees. We know that we will not be able to substitute the services of AAI employees,' said a senior executive with a domestic private airline.

International carriers are evaluating the situation and will decide their plan of action later.

'We had to cancel services to some of the airports in other parts of the world when they were on strike. We may have to resolve to the same if the strike goes as planned by the airport employees. We will not take any risk,' said a senior executive with a leading European carrier.

According to trade unions, their members will go on for harder measures like blocking of services in airports if government goes ahead with the plan. Meanwhile, the government said that it has put in place a contingency plan in case the employee unions block work.

Government, according to senior government officials, is working on a plan to prevent disruption of air services. 'We have put in place a plan. The AAI has set up a monitoring cell in airports and control room at the centre to monitor the development in each airports,' said an AAI official.

According to sources, the contingency plan of the government include an alternate workers pool to man the airports. Besides, the government is also holding negotiations with the employee unions to solve the crisis. It is also said that the government may look at taking the help of paramilitary forces to augment the services in airports in case of a strike.