Govt eager to end pilots' strike

New Delhi: Although the Union government believes that drastic cost cutting, including salary reductions, are essential for Air India’s revival, it is eager to see an early end to the current impasse between the pilots and the AI management.
According to top sources in the government, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his meeting with civil aviation minister Praful Patel today asked the ministry to take an initiative, even as the turmoil in the ailing airline deepened. A top minister also hinted that the government may go slow in imposing the salary cut: “If payments are cut, then, of course, there will be agitation. We may have to adopt a reconciliatory approach.”
To appease the pilots, Patel noted “no decisions” about incentive pay cuts had been taken and decisions will be taken “only after due consultation” with the workers.
Congress party managers told Business Standard that party president Sonia Gandhi was also worried. She spoke to some senior party colleagues last night to assess the situation. The Congress feels that ahead of the Maharashtra elections, the strike in the airlines, headquartered in Mumbai, might become a political tool in the hand of the opposition.
But the UPA leadership is clear that the proposed cost cutting will have to be imposed to revive the ailing governmentl aviation company.
30/09/09 Business Standard

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Categories: Air India Domestic Sep 2009, NACIL Sep 2009