Supreme Court declines interim relief to Air India employees
The case will come up for final hearing in the second week of January 2015
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday refused to give interim relief to employees of Air India Ltd, who claimed that they’d been receiving only three-fourths their salaries after the Air India-Indian Airlines merger in 2011.
A bench of justices Anil R. Dave and Kurian Joseph were not “inclined to" grant interim relief at this stage. The case comes up for final hearing in the second week of January 2015.
The engineers’ association, represented by lawyer K.K. Venugopal told the court that despite an “infusion" of ₹ 49,120 crore as a “bailout" to the airline company, Air India had deducted 25% of their salaries since July 2012.
Venugopal said that ₹ 200 crore were dues payable to licensed employees like pilots, engineers and cabin crew and ₹ 120 crore to unlicensed employees. The employees contended that a requirement of notice while changing service conditions under Section 9A of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 hadn’t been complied with by Air India. They also contended that arrears had not been paid.
The central government, through attorney general Mukul Rohatgi, contested the claim. Rohatgi said the requirement of a notice under 9A was done away with after a committee headed by former apex court judge D.M. Dharmadhikari committee had heard all the affected parties.
He said at least 3,000-4,000 employees had accepted the report. He also said that if the “legal battle" was dropped, the salaries would be paid within two weeks as per the committee’s report.
The central government told the court that the Dharmadhikari committee had been set up to bring a standard salary structure as pilots in Air India were getting much higher salaries than ones in other airlines. The committee found that the salary structure was unviable. Their basic salaries had been doubled, but allowances were curtailed.
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