Airport bullies

The woes of Indian fliers seem never to end. If it is not the weather being nasty, it is the unions, and more frequently the latter. Not con...

The woes of Indian fliers seem never to end. If it is not the weather being nasty, it is the unions, and more frequently the latter. Not content with offering bad services to hapless passengers, these unions have never felt any qualms about leaving fliers in the lurch every time the whim takes them.

So it is this time, with Airports Authority employees’ unions flexing their muscles. Nor will this propensity change until the government can take its courage in both hands to deal severely with them. It may be that their demands are valid, but that is beside the point. Strike is an extreme step, sanctioned as a measure of last resort. And yet, in the hands especially of airports and airlines unions, it has become the first stage of action to seek redress.

The reason is obvious: there is nothing like grounding services for them to make themselves heard. By holding services to ransom, they believe they enhance their chances of a favourable settlement. They are right. Their behaviour may be offensive, but it is rational. If it works and it seems to it makes sense for them to indulge in it. No wonder that noises about a strike have begun just as a board meeting approaches.

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The administration of labour relations must do a balancing act between giving workers sufficient rights to protect their legitimate interests while discouraging them from using extreme measures too often for the good of their business or customers, or when their demands are patently unjustified. Instead, it has long erred in favour of the unions. Flights are an essential not peripheral service, and it is not as if throwing them out of gear for a few days will not cause immense harassment to the public as well as severe economic losses to their operators. Indeed, airports are literally a country’s window to the world, and a disruption in their services does not present a pleasing view of what goes on in the country.

The authorities, for their part, have sufficient legal authority to contain wayward unions if they so choose. The trouble is thatthey do not choose. Timidity in the face of strike action has been the custom for so long that it is indeed scarcely rational to blame unions for thinking that they can get what they want when they want it, no matter how unacceptable their way of demanding it.

All these unfortunate tendencies are naturally compounded under weak governments. This government has famously proved the point in the case of the Fifth Pay Commission’s award. Indeed, it has opened a Pandora’s box of demands that will keep arising in other sectors as a result of what has been given away to central government employees. But it would do everyone, including the unions which sorely need a dose of realism, a favour if it showed a little boldness on its last leg. If that is what it takes to break the back of aggressive unionism in the civil aviation sector, the government should be prepared to shut down airport operations for some weeks and let it be known that it would not hesitate to sack employees if need be. Only after making this point should it negotiate their demands and, if it accedes to them, tailor into it a time period before which the new package will not be renegotiated.