Ministry terms Air India staff strike illegal

The civil aviation ministry has termed the strike call by the Air India employees on March 18 as illegal.

The Joint Action Committee (JAC), which comprises eight employee unions, including Indian Airlines Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) and All India Aircraft Engineers Association (AIAEA), has given a notice to National Aviation Company of India Ltd (NACIL) that around 17,000 employees will go on a countrywide strike from March 18 over the closure of the existing Hyderabad and Bangalore airports and pending wage arrears.

After the notice, one conciliatory meeting between the union leaders and the labour commissioner has been held. The next meeting will be held on March 17.

"Since the matter is with the labour commissioner, a strike by the unions will be completely illegal," said an Air India executive.

"After the privatisation of the greenfield airports, the groundhandling will be done by private agents and several people may lose their jobs. Also, arrears worth Rs 250 crore have to be paid to around 4,000 employees," said a member of the JAC.

"We sent a notice on March 4, 14 days before the strike, and the meeting was held day before yesterday. How can our strike be illegal? The strike is definitely on from March 18," he added.

Air India executives said there had been several meetings with the NACIL chairman after the notice. "They were supposed to have gate meetings on March 4 and 12. But after the discussions with the chairman, that was withdrawn," said one executive.

In July last year, the eight unions had protested against the merger of the two national carriers and demanded parity in career progression and clearance pending wage arrears.

There had been meetings with the labour commissioner and the management following which a part of their pending arrears were paid and an assurance was given that the career progression issue would be looked into.