INDIAN AVIATION’S MISSING UNIONS

Unions, a mere reference to them, sends chill through the Business Industry as well as the generation that were born after 1980’s. Thanks to the Bollywood movies that showed Unions only as villians. Take my home State, Kerala that has been crippled by Unions. With that image of Unions nobody wanted to be a part of the Union. The Indian Unions never showed how they could add value to businesses or workers interest. The Unions worked much like the political parties, they had their patronage with. Workers interests or business interest were the last in their agenda and this meant Unions got weaker as years passed by with no support from the workers.

Fast forward to the ‘covid 19 times’, what the Aviation workers miss direly is the collective strength of a ‘Union’. From 2015 onwards, I was advocating for a Strong Union in the Aviation Industry across companies….for the Aircraft Maintenance Engineers, for the ATC officers, for the Pilots and for the Cabin Crew. Nothing materialised because of the ‘image’ the UNIONS carried in their young minds. As lawyers, we see trouble early. I always knew without a Union, Aviation will suffer. I say aviation, because the loss is not just for the workers, loss is also for the Airline Companies. There is no trust, without trust, you can’t build anything…. The Airline companies might think they kept the trouble out and they can push around a bit more….but these are the time, you can’t push too much. These are times where ‘relationships’ would have worked…..relationships based on trust.

Most Airline companies are not paying the salaries to their employees particularly the pilots, the cabin crew, the engineers. None can complain, none can raise their voices……The REASON….”We will not pay salaries to avoid JOB Cuts”. This statement is far from truth. The fact is that no Airline in India would survive without trimming the employee numbers as well as the salaries that would be paid. Therefore, the JOB Cuts will soon be there to be seen and everyone is silent because any raised voices will certainly mean that they would be first to go….but this is not the way they reassure themselves…the reassure themselves saying that they are not raising voices because they do not want JOB Cuts.

The erstwhile Indian Airlines and Air India had Unions, but these Unions were fighting each other off after the merger trying to protect the interest of their cadres. Jet Airways had a Union, which did nothing but had a ‘booze party AGM’. Pilots were happy they had unions, Naresh Goyal was happy he had control and the Company closed down without the least of the resistance or a fight put up by the Union. Jet AME’s also had a Union, they did some good work, but were too late in the end of the day to do anything effective. What is ironical is that while the workers did not have Unions that could take care of their issues, the Airlines together formed an association called the Federation of Indian Airlines to take on issues that affected all of them. Through this FIA, the Airlines have managed to get FDTL Regulations to suit them, the ‘notice period’ for pilots when they change jobs, have bonds that chains the pilots to the companies like bonded labourers etc. Each of it is illegal, but with no one to fight, they had it their way. I took on the FDTL regulations and inside 6 months, the Delhi High Court held it was ultra vires the statute and directed the DGCA to come out with a new FDTL. The purpose of my fight was never to ‘throw out’ the FDTL Regulations, but to point out to the pilots that if they are together they can fight off bad regulations / policies. As a lawyer, I always knew that even if the Court pulls down a regulations, the Authorities will bring something more draconian. I showed the pilots what is possible, but they still did not find good enough reasons to get together to form a Union to protect their interests. Had there been a Union, the DGCA could not have come out with the FDTL they have now come out with.

There is a time for everything. The time to form a Union was about 2 years back …somewhere in 2016-17. Today, even if pilots want to form a Union, there is no point in it. You can’t achieve anything, because Jobs will be lost, whatever you try to do, salaries will be cut, whatever you do. Had there been a Union, we could have agreed to a salary cut but only on a written assurance that Jobs will not be lost. Airline companies cannot cheat anyone, they have to be man enough to tell it on the face.

They say that if you can’t stand for something, you will fall for everything. That is what will happen to Aviation Workers. In the past, they could stand for nothing and now they will fall for everything. There will be threats, there will be arm twisting of these workers by the managements and no one can do anything….no one can raise voice, no one can crib…

Airline Companies might laugh for a while, but the laugh will not last long. Yes, they will have their way with the workers, but workers are humans. They will err….and every error could be very costly for the company. Even before the virus, Airline companies have been operating with minimal employees….minimal pilots, minimal cabin crew, minimal engineers……they cannot cut even a few jobs without violating regulations. But now they will cut it because, they have to cut down the fleet. For eg.Indigo has 250 aircrafts. They won’t need even 100 in the changed scenario, if they expect to survive the next two years. Without an antibiotic or a vaccine for Covid 19, we should actually forget International flights. No country is going to screw itself repeatedly. In that sense, airlines based out of middle east is kind of finished. However, just after the lockdown is eased, there will be a surge in certain sectors like the middle east and Kerala, but they are all going to be one way tickets. They are flights getting back the Indian population residing in the middle east. So the survival is domestic flying. For domestic destinations in the changed scenario, you don’t even need 100 aircrafts in your fleet. This means there are pilots, cabin crew and engineers going to have job losses.

The Airlines will do what they know the best. Push people to the brim. People will be silent, but they will commit errors. There is not much of a scope for errors. Don’t forget that technician who was killed while working on an Aircraft of SpiceJet which he was not authorised to work on. But this is going to be the new norm. Unqualified people will be working because they are cheaper to keep. Aircraft maintenance is going to be a big issue. Pilots are coming after a long lockdown. Many with expired ratings extended by the lockdown. No refreshers, no training and that is going to add to the problems. We have great weather too in India. Opening up straight into the monsoons. Remember all those runway excursions, overshoots…none of them could actually be attributed to the pilots, but they were a lot easier target than to hold the Aerodrome operator or the DGCA or the Airline company guilty. There is a lot hidden in each of the Accident / Incident report. The whole idea of an Accident / incident investigation is to prevent an accident, but out authorities use it just as a means to save their skin and we are going to pay heavily for it.

New research shows that it will be 2025 for Aviation to reach to pre Covid 19 times. 2025 is a good 5 years, but I am not even looking at the next 5 years, but just the next two years…how many airlines in India is going to survive the next two years is to be seen. Whoever survives is going to have to chop thousands of jobs. For the Aviation Workers, either way the scenario is going to be bad. If they lose jobs, they lose their livelihoods. If they manage to hold on to jobs, they will lose their lives because that will be the stretch they will have to push themselves. Remember, human bodies are no robots. They need rest.

If you want to know what a lobby/Union could do… The Airlines are now fighting with the Government on the issue of keeping ‘middle seats empty’. The Airlines do have a point. Keeping middle seats empty achieves nothing but incurs more costs to the Airline which it can ill afford. But the Airlines is assuming that their aircrafts would be full. Even if government doesn’t bring in such ‘ridiculous measures’, the aircrafts will have only that many passengers to fly that will easily allow them to keep their middle seats vacant. But this is one fight that Airlines will win eventually with the governments but not with Covid 19….

 Had there been a union for the aviation workers, had there been a trust, a bridge could have been built between the airline companies and the workers so that everybody is on board, everybody is pulled along, nobody is stretched too much and whatever money was on the table, could have been spread out for each to survive.

As for me, the aviation workers are now like the BUFFALO SOLDIERS……………FIGHTING ON ARRIVAL…………… FIGHTING FOR SURVIVAL……………..