Airline strike from May 8 likely

BY A CORRESPONDENT
April 29, 2006

Problems aggravate for Indian airlines with employees across India threatening to go on indefinite strike from May 8 if their demands are not met, including the demand for wage revision.

According to the Air Corporations Employees' Union (ACEU), employees would be demonstrating in the airline offices till April 28, and would go on to demonstrate countrywide between May 1 and 5.

The management is playing down the impact of the protests, with a senior executive saying, "The protests are taking place outside offices before and after office hours. We have been talking to them. We do not expect it to disrupt services and will resolve it at the earliest." Officials added that flight operations would not be affected.

The charter of demands includes a demand for wage revision (which has been pending for ten years), career progression, and an inquiry into the alleged siphoning of Rs 19.52 crore from the employee pension fund. According to the ACEU, "Carrier progression has not taken place for the last two decades. Employees are languishing in their grades and posts for past 39 years." The ACEU, which claims to represent 99 per cent of the employees, involved in frontline areas, including commercial, traffic, ticketing, reservations, airport and cabin crew, said it also had 90 per cent of the workforce in operations areas supporting it, including ground support and engineers.