Air India strike leaves passengers stranded
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A strike at Air India, the country’s beleaguered national carrier, dragged into its second day on Wednesday and forced many flight cancellations.
At least 13,000 passengers were stranded because of the strike called by Air India’s ground and technical staff who said they were protesting against a company “gag” order on union leaders speaking to reporters about last week’s plane crash in Mangalore.
Air India spokesman K. Swaminathan said 76 flights, mostly domestic, had been cancelled.
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The Wall
Had this been the staff of a private carrier, the penulty of holding passengers to ransom would have been severe and mostly in the form of paycuts or suspension. Of course, in a public enterprise, run by the tax payers’ money, the unions are all powerfull and do not hesitate to inconvenience thousands of stranded passengers. To hell with professionalism, responsibility and compassion. The retribution isn’t severe hence the fear of authority is sadly lacking in the striking professionals. As for the rights of the workers, there is a forum for redressal, isn’t there?
Well,the people have right to represent and raise their voice but involvement of some unions in this way has caused to show that AI can be crippled at any time.
The demands shall come through a proper channel and of course judiciary is also there to help. Just causing grief and trouble to people who are innocent cannot be regarded a justified way to get the demands fulfilled.
I guess one also needs to this from the perspective of the employees. In an organization where power-hungry, corrupt politicians ride roughshod over institutions and processes, the employees have reason to be anguished. One is thrown back to the travesty that is Indian institutions when something of this sort strikes. The Manmohan Singh government really has no moral ground to cry foul.