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Air India has set up a four-member committee to plan a road map for cutting down the number of recognised unions.
A company senior said, "A committee headed by Krishna Mohan Sahni (former secretary in the labour ministry) has been formed. It will determine norms for recognising and synergising operations between unions associated with erstwhile Air India and Indian Airlines." Air India has 15 recognised and unrecognised unions.
The committee, mandated to determine the norms, processes and modalities for conducting the exercise for recognition of unions associated with Air India, Air India Engineering Services (AIESL) and Air India Air Transport Services (AIATSL), is scheduled to submit its report in January. Besides Sahni, the committee includes Umrao Mal Purohit (president, International Transport Workers' Federation and All India Railway Federation), S K Mukhopadhya (former chief labour commissioner) and Ajit Nigam (advisor, human resources, Ircon International).
Smaller unions oppose
While the bigger unions have endorsed the move, the smaller ones have protested against it. "Three of the smaller unions have written to us against the move. The committee is set to hold meetings with all unions and submit a report early next year," the company official said, without name the unions.
The state-owned air carrier has drawn up a blueprint to reduce the number of recognised unions in the airline to two from 15 now - one for pilots and the other representing the rest. Air India is estimated to employ 25,000 people, including the airline's maintenance, repair & operations (MRO) and ground handling subsidiaries staff. Once implemented, this would be the largest human resources reform in the history of the airline. "Too many unions lead to conflicting demands, which often comes in the way of fruitful negotiations. We are looking at scaling down the number of recognised unions through elections," the official added. The selection of the two unions will be done through election. Air India's move to reduce the number of unions draws parallel to a the Indian Railways' earlier in 2007, where the number of unions was cut down to two from 34. The process saw 1.4 million railway employees deciding through secret ballot the leadership of its trade unions.
George Abraham, general secretary, Aviation Industry Employees Guild (one of the bigger unions and the largest representative body of erstwhile Air India employees), said: "We are open to the plan of unification of unions. However, we are against the management's proposal of three separate unions for engineers for Air India, AIESL and AIATSL."
According to the plan, the airline's two subsidiaries - AIESL for MRO and AIATSL for ground handling - would have between them another three recognised unions.
Analysts have given a thumbs up to Air India's plan. Said Amber Dubey, partner and head of aviation at global consultancy KPMG: "Rationalising the number of unions at AI is a long-pending reform. The AI management will have fewer union leaders to talk to and the conversation is likely to be more mature. Fewer unions also mean that they would have higher bargaining power to get their legitimate demands accepted, rather than being pitted one against the other. Multiplicity of unions helps none, other than, perhaps, the union leaders."
"No one has forgotten the debilitating pilot strike during the peak summer season last year. Everyone lost - AI, Indian passengers, foreign tourists, India's brand image and the real owner of AI, the Indian taxpayer," Dubey added.
The Indian Pilots' Guild, which represents pilots of erstwhile Air India, went on a 58-day strike in May 2012 to protest against the promotion procedure and the induction of erstwhile Indian Airlines pilots in training programmes to fly Dreamliners. The guild was consequently derecognised by Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh.
