The Civil Aviation Joint Action Forum (Cajaf), consisting of Air India and Indian employees, has warned of an indefinite strike from December 31, if the National Aviation Company of India Limited (Nacil) is forced to form a joint venture with foreign firms to carry out ground handling at six major airports across India.
The Air India employees’ union is protesting against the new ground handling policy (GHP) that will come into force from January 1, 2009.
On Tuesday, around 1,500 employees of Nacil (a merged company of AI and Indian) held demonstrations at Santa Cruz airport for an hour. From January 2009, a new GHP is likely to come into force at Mumbai airport where three agencies instead of the current 40 will be doing GH.
“If the new policy comes into force from January, we will go on a flash strike from December 31, 2008,” said George Abraham, general secretary, Aviation Industry Employees’ Guild (AIEG).
Nacil has been doing GH for AI and Indian and other airlines like Thai Airways, Cathay Pacific, etc. Under the new policy, Nacil will have to form a joint venture with SATS, a subsidiary of Singapore Airlines for GH.
“If this happens, there will be lot of retrenchments and the employees of Nacil will no longer be government servants,” said Abraham.
s_navita@dnaindia.net
