New law soon to stop pilots, aircraft engineers from going on strike
The move could cover pilots and engineers of all major carriers, including Air India
New Delhi: The civil aviation ministry has proposed that pilots and aircraft engineers be removed from the “workmen” category of the Industrial Disputes Act. If this proposal goes through, they will no longer be able to go on strike.
The proposal is likely to be placed before the Union labour ministry and law ministry for their views before the government goes ahead with amending the Industrial Disputes Act. “Why should highly-paid personnel like pilots and aircraft engineers, who get lakhs of rupees every month as salary, be categorised as workmen any longer? They are definitely not workmen,” a source said.
The move could cover pilots and engineers of all major carriers, including Air India. If this ultimately goes through, it could also raise a big question mark on the future of unions in Air India, where there have been several bilateral agreements in the past between the management and unions representing various sections of employees. If the civil aviation ministry’s proposal finds favour with the labour ministry, the biggest impact is likely to be on Air India, that has been hit due to various strikes in the past decade. But it is bound to be resisted by the unionised pilots and other categories of employees.
A large section of pilots of the erstwhile Indian Airlines are now employees of unified carrier Air India and members of the Indian Commercial Pilots’ Association (ICPA) which has had several running battles on various issues, even recently, with the Air India management.
Air India’s management can heave a big sigh of relief if the aviation ministry’s move goes through. In the past few years, both, the domestic-route and international-route pilots of the national carrier have gone on strike separately for various reasons linked to wages and career-progression issues. This, perhaps, is something that the government is keen to avoid in the future.
Three years ago in 2012, during the second tenure of the UPA government, the civil aviation ministry was planning a similar move to crack down on strikes by employees.