Air India employees defer strike

A proposed strike by all Air India employees, threatening to cripple services, starting Tuesday has been deferred. While the Joint Action Committee of eight unions that had called the strike agreed to defer it after conciliation proceedings with the Labour Commissioner, the Delhi High Court, hearing a petition filed by the JAC, has declared the strike as illegal.

The unions had given a notice to National Aviation Company of India Ltd (NACIL) earlier this month saying that 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.

While one conciliatory meeting had already been held, it’s only on Monday that the unions agreed to defer the strike.

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The strike call had been termed as ‘illegal’ by the NACIL that runs the merged Air India and Indian Airlines and the Ministry of Civil Aviation had also warned that it will take a serious view of the proposed strike when it met union members on Saturday.

The JAC, including ACEU and the Indian Commercial Pilots Association, were protesting on the “non-implementation” of various demands, including agreements relating to wages and cadre policy.