Striking Air India pilots seek PM’s intervention

By IANS,

New Delhi : The striking Air India pilots Monday sought the prime minister’s intervention to end their stand-off with the airline’s management. Eleven pilots went on hunger-strike Sunday.


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“We request the prime minister and the government to intervene in order to end the present impasse at the earliest,” the Indian Pilots Guild (IPG) said in a statement.

“The failure of the management to resolve a minor labour issue is proof of the incompetence of the industrial relations department of Air India,” it added.

Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh, however, said the pilots will have to come back to work unconditionally.

“All they have to do is to come back unconditionally to work. They never gave a notice of a strike. High Court said it is illegal. I don’t even know what the issues are. They don’t know themselves. What can we do?” Ajit Singh said earlier in the day.

Eleven striking pilots Sunday went on an indefinite hunger strike at Jantar Mantar here, seeking reinstatement of 101 sacked pilots.

Around 440 pilots struck work May 8 against the management’s move to train pilots from the erstwhile Indian Airlines in the merged entity on the soon-to-be-inducted Boeing-787 Dreamliner.

The strike is said to have caused a Rs.154 crore loss so far to the carrier.

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