Majority Air India pilots call off strike; Delhi pilots adamant.

By Gopal Ethiraj, Chennai

CHENNAI, 29 September (asiantribune.com): Although the Air India management on Sunday agreed to look into the grievances of the striking pilots, particularly the productivity-linked incentives (PLIs), and decided to form an ‘exclusive’ committee to look into the PLI modalities, a faction of executive pilots are firm on continuing the strike. This is even after a two-hour meeting with the Chairman and Managing Director Arvind Jadhav on Monday that ended in a stalemate. But a majority of pilots in some centres have resumed work.

While most pilots have given up their agitation, the Delhi pilots are adamant, and they are for continuing till the management also conceded their demand and paid them their last three months' salary arrears. According to a senior Air India official, executive pilots based in Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata have resumed duty on Monday.

Capt. V K Bhalla who is spearheading the pilots’ cause, accused Air India Chairman and Managing Director of creating confusion among the pilots. "We are still on strike," he maintained. The talks have ended in a stalemate as the management refused to give a positive reply over the payment of our due salary and withdrawal of PLI-cut order," Captain Bhalla said..

"The salary of the pilots will be paid with the cut, but he (Jadhav) refused to give any exact date or time when it will be paid to us," he said. "As of now, our stand is what it was earlier," Bhalla said. Air India spokesman Jitendra Bhargava also said the talks had remained "inconclusive".

Jadhav is expected to fly down from Mumbai to meet the Delhi faction of the senior executive pilots represented by Bhalla on Tuesday.
Air India has its head office at Mumbai.

As for now, flight operations on Monday are expected to be better than what it was in the last two days. The Air India management worked on the fact that the protesting executive pilots are only a loosely formed forum and so there would be differences of opinion within the group.

The civil aviation ministry has called a meeting of all airlines Tuesday to discuss the situation arising out of the Air India pilots' agitation as well as a similar protest by their counterparts in the Jet Airways earlier this month.

The Air India agitation began last week after the management's decision to slash the PLIs of employees by 25 to 50 per cent as a part of cost-cutting measures. The airline's current debt is about Rs 16,500 crore and its losses stood at Rs 7,200 crore in fiscal 2008-09 that ended March 31.

The cash-strapped airline operates around 310 flights (domestic--220 and international-90). Beleaguered Air India which carries about 30,000 passengers each day was even mulling suspending its operations for about 15 days from midnight tonight after fresh talks with the striking Executive pilots failed to break the three-day deadlock over cut in perks. Sources in the airline in Delhi and Mumbai said tonight the state-owned carrier has stopped accepting bookings and that it was seriously considering suspending the operations. A formal order to suspend the flights is being discussed and expected to be issued soon, sources said.

This should have spread fear waves among the pilots. The pilots of national carrier Air India in Chennai and other centres have called off their three-day strike over reduction in productivity-linked incentives (PLI).

BJP immediately condemned Air India's move to suspend operations, saying the step during the festival season was akin to "daylight attempted murder" of the national carrier. "The decision to suspend operations in the festive season on flimsy grounds is atrocious. This is daylight attempted murder of the national carrier," BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said. The BJP MP maintained that the precarious financial health of Air India was a result of the decisions of the government and mishandling of the Airline by the Civil Aviation Ministry.

"The government wants to punish 32,000 employees to cover up its misdeeds," he said. "We demand that operations should be resumed immediately by withdrawing anti-labour policies.”