A day after Bombay High Court squashed a half-century-old exemption enjoyed by Air India ? from a legal requirement that allowed it to bring about a change in its employees? service condition without prior notifications ? after eight of its employee unions appealed against the exemption, the carrier is set to appeal against the court order while its employee unions, too, are set to follow suit.
A senior Air India official told FE that the airline would challenge the court order. ?The Dharmadhikari Committee Report hasn?t been touched in the judgement,? the senior Air india official said.
Commenting on the applicability of Section 9A, the official said that Air India had got exemption from 16 state governments on the applicability of Section 9A of the Industrial Disputes Act decades ago.
?However, this was recently amended and required the nod of the Centre to get the same exemption. We didn?t ask the central government for exemption because the presumption was that we have had this exemption and there had been previous court cases where the courts have upheld this exemption for both Air India and erstwhile Indian Airline,? a senior Air India official said.
?We will soon decide with our lawyers as to how to go about the appealing process,? the official added.
Meanwhile, the employee unions of the airline is also set to follow the suit and appeal against the order.
?We are delighted that Section 9A is held to be applicable to Air India. But we will quite possibly appeal the verdict of the court on the grounds that the ad hoc changes that have been brought about by the airlines (Air India) are illegal as Section 9A was not applicable when such changes were applied,? said senior advocate Jane Cox, who represented Air India engineers and Pilots Association.
According to an Air India official, the airline had in January 2013 decided to pay ad hoc wages to 87% of its employees, subjected to the payment criteria defined by the Justice Dharmadhikari panel report.
The Bombay High Court has in the same order also asked the status quo to be maintained on the Dharmadhikari panel?s recommendations, which proposed a 25% reduction in salaries of the Air India staff.
It will, however, now have to serve a minimum of 21 days of prior notice period to its employees before rendering any changes in their service conditions.
During October 2013, eight employee unions of Air India and erstwhile Indian Airlines had approached the Bombay High Court to review the HR integration of unified Air India.
