Over 17,000 airline employees stand to lose their 'permanent' jobs

More than 17,000 employees of foreign airlines working at Mumbai airport, and 50,000 employees at six airports across the country, stand to lose
their `permanent' jobs in January, lay offs which have nothing to do with recession. These are repercussions of a government policy on "ground handling'' that comes into force early next year.
A Directorate General of Civil Aviation circular on September 28, 2007, stated that for security reasons, all airlines including foreign carriers-operating from Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad-will have to outsource `ground handling jobs' hitherto done by their employees from January 1, 2009, to an agency chosen by the airport operator.
Ground handling is important from the airline hospitality, security and safety point of view. It defines several pre/post flight functions like passenger check-in, baggage handling, transportation of passengers and baggages to/from aircraft, liaisoning with local authorities etc. Other ground handling jobs include aircraft handling (marshalling, security, parking, etc), aircraft servicing (liasioning for fuelling and defuelling, cabin equipment, cooling, heating), aircraft cleaning, and loading/unloading of passengers, baggage and cargo.
In view of this government order, airlines have decided to retrench these Indian employees. Currently, foreign airlines have the option of self ground handling or outsourcing it to specialised companies. With many airlines opting for self ground handling, airports have multiple ground handling agencies.
The first round of lay-offs got going at Air France's Mumbai office on Wednesday. "December 10 was the deadline set by the airline for its 27 employees to decide: either sign the airline's voluntary retirement programme or risk retrenchment next month. All have signed the retirement programme,'' said an airline employee."Now it remains to be seen whether we will be thrown out on January 1. But they said if the DGCA revokes the circular, our jobs will stay,'' the employee added.
According to a conservative estimate, there are about 50,000 foreign airline employees in the above mentioned six airports, 80 per cent of whom have `permanent' jobs. Other airlines have also alerted their Indian employees to the possibility of job losses.
13/12/08 Manju V/Times of India

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Dec 2008