Mumbai, May 26 (IANS) The Bombay High Court Wednesday declined to grant ex-parte relief to Air India, which sought the court’s intervention for a stay on the two-day old agitation by a section of its employees.
A division bench of Justices S.J. Kathawala and R.G. Ketkar directed the national carrier to serve notice to the agitating employees’ unions and placed the matter for hearing Friday.
The beleaguered airline, grappling with a flash strike by around 20,000 of its employees, including engineers and cabin crew, moved the high court Wednesday seeking restraining orders to prevent the employees from continuing their strike.
The employees resorted to the flash strike against an alleged ‘gag order’ prohibiting them from airing their views before the media.
Air India clarified Wednesday afternoon that the so-called ‘gag order’ was actually an internal administrative order of July 2009, which asked the employees to stop airing their views in public as it could harm the company’s revenue prospects and those violating it would be liable for disciplinary action.
This internal administrative order was challenged by the Aviation Industry Employees Guild (AIEG) before the high court, which, however, upheld Air India’s contentions.
An Air India spokesman said that the airline had May 24 only reiterated the same internal administrative order of July 2009.
He regretted that some sections of the media had misinterpreted it as a ‘gag order.’
Besides this order, the employees have been agitating on issues pertaining to their salaries and show-cause notices served to some employees.
Late Tuesday night, Air India even threatened to terminate services of the employees if they failed to call off the stir.
Air India chairman-cum-managing director Arvind Jadhav appealed to the employees to withdraw their stir without pre-conditions ‘in this hour of crisis’ in the wake of the Mangalore air crash that killed 158 people.
Meanwhile, airline has decided to give full refund to all those passengers whose flights were cancelled and even made hotel arrangements and transportation for transit passengers.
rounak