Air India pilots have called for a week-long secret ballot to decide on whether they should go on strike to protest the management’s decision not to withdraw the notification which says that pilots are not workmen.

“It's time we reach out and make the nation aware of the gross injustice and the illegal things that have been happening in Air India, as to how the management has been playing with the judicial system with total disregard for law, by wilfully breaking the law and citing the MOCA for all the unlawful acts executed by the Air India Management. Just like the way they have violated our ‘bilateral agreements and forcefully taken 25% of our hard earned money’, now they have come for our identity and not to forget our 8 years long struggle for pay parity which still continues,” the Indian Commercial Pilots Association has said in a communication to its members.

Earlier this month, Deepa Mahajan, Executive Director (P&IR), issued an order which said: "The Ministry of Labour & Employment has after, evaluation, in light of the duties and responsibilities of `Pilot in Command’ (PIC) in Air India, as referred under Rule 141 of Aircraft Act 1934 and Rules made thereafter observed that the duties and responsibilities of Pilot in Command are of managerial and administrative nature which may not fall in the definition of the 'Workman' under section 2(s) of the Industrial Disputes Act 1947.''

In effect what this means is that an Air India PIC is a manager and an administrative category of pilot which forbids them from forming a union. There is a feeling in Airlines House, the headquarters of Air India, that the notification of August 20 gives legal sanctity to a practice that the erstwhile Indian Airlines has been following for over two decades.

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