Air India staff interest protected: Madras High Court 

Employees’ charges misplaced: judge

The Madras High Court on Friday said, it was “fully convinced” that the Centre had protected the interests of Air India employees “to the hilt” while going for 100% disinvestment of the sinking public air carrier, that could not be revived despite pumping in over ₹1 lakh crore of public money, and handing it over to Talace Private Limited of the Tata Group earlier this year.

Dismissing a case filed by a trade union, Justice V. Parthiban wrote: “The Government appeared to have taken every care not to jettison the interests of its employees in the bargain. Considering the fact that Air India Limited, prior to the disinvestment initiative, was a sinking company, a fortuitous transformation has happened for their (employees) own good.”

The order said: “In the opinion of this court, various conditions of service under the Share Purchase Agreement (SPA), signed on October 25, 2021, are the best that the Government could wrangle out from Talace towards ensuring protection of employees’ interest. Therefore, the employees conjecturing they have been treated unfairly and unjustly is misplaced and misconceived.”

After taking note of the clauses in the SPA with respect to job security, revision of pay scale, leave encashment, gratuity, provident fund, medical benefits, passage facilities, arrears of salary, colony accommodation and reservations in employment, Justice Parthiban said: “This court would have no hesitation to hold that at the end of the day, the Government handed out a fair, reasonable, just and equitable package to the employees.”

Convinced with the clarifications provided by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta on all concerns raised by Air Corporation Employees Union (ACEU), which claimed to be representing 5,000 employees of Air India Limited, the judge wrote: “It cannot be gainsaid that the interests of the employees have been bartered away unilaterally, unjustly and arbitrarily.”

The employees union had approached the court last year with a plea to restrain the Centre from disinvesting the air carrier without fully protecting the employee service conditions. Though the disinvestment process got completed in the meantime and the air carrier changed hands in January this year, the judge went into the merits of the case to determine whether the employees’ rights had been protected.