AI privatisation concerns: Staff unions to meet aviation min today

MUMBAI: Air India employee unions, which are opposing the airline’s privatisation, will meet civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri in Delhi on Monday. This will be the second meeting in a month with the minister on the issue.

The unions stated that their prime topic of discussion would be the voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) package for employees.

The meeting comes after reports of the government floating Expression of Interest (EOI) for selling its entire stake in the airline to private investors by month-end surfaced. The aviation ministry has stated that privatisation was the only option before the government to keep the airline afloat.

On January 2, the unions had met Puri, civil aviation secretary Pradeep Singh Kharola and Air India chairman and managing director Ashwani Lohani. In this meeting, Puri had informed the unions that the airline has a debt of around ~80,000 crore and there is no other solution than selling it to an interested private airline.

“The minister assured to help resolve our problems that we discussed in our first meeting, hence, he had called for another meeting on Monday. However, the employees started raising doubts on job security and are seeking more details about VRS,” said a senior union member.

Another union member said that reports of no retrenchment only for a year after privatisation is worrying employees. “Reports state that Air India’s new owner could retain around 11,000 employees for a year, which is a concern to all the airline employees, ” he said.