 I'll give you a practical point of view on the various issues raised by the previous panel speakers because of my long innings in the trade union of more than 30 years. One aspect would be about the developments in the civil aviation industry that led to privatisation and so many forms, so many changes in the structure of civil aviation industry. And the second would be the existing scenario as far as industrial relations and employees are concerned. All of us know civil aviation was started in 1908 and till 1944 there were only private airlines in the world. Wherever airlines were there, all over the world, there were only private airlines. And for the first time in 1944, the international civil aviation organisation was formed in Geneva where state heads met and felt that we should nationalise civil aviation all over the world because civil aviation is very crucial to the security of the country for the internal transport planning of the country, for transport of manufactured goods and for so many reasons and for the all-round development of the country itself. And all airlines in the world nationalised all the private airlines and here in India also we had 15 private airlines, Deccan Airlines, Himalayan Airlines, lots of airlines all of them were nationalised and brought under the Air Corporation Act and Air India and Indian Airlines were the only two airlines, one for domestic and neighbouring countries and the other for purely international transport. So that happened and then slowly, so it became a highly regulated industry. Everything was regulated and regulations were adopted absolutely strictly and this went on till the late 80s when US started slowly deregulating and private airlines were allowed, private aviation companies were allowed and slowly then it spread to Europe and then it spread to all countries in the world and then you had a scenario where lots of private players entered the scenario and regulations were getting diluted in every country and very naturally it came to India much later. In the 90s when there were attempts to, late 90s when there were attempts to bring private aviation to India there was lot of resistance from all of us trade unions. We kept it at bay for some time but it was to come because government was not investing in purchase of aircrafts for Air India or Indian Airlines and so the requirement of civil aviation was ever growing and the government companies could not meet those requirements and then lots of private airlines came and today the scenario is totally different. All companies have restructured, it started in other parts of the world where ground handling became a separate company, catering became a separate company IT became a separate company, engineering became a separate company so it broke into different different companies but in many parts of the world trade union was very mature and they could actually tide over this situation like in Germany Lufthansa broke up into about 8 companies but till date that union Verdi continues to represent employees in all the 8 companies and all collective bargaining agreements are with this union Verdi so despite this restructuring they were able to maintain their hold and actually increase that hold and each of those 8 companies have become multinational like you have Lufthansa technique it has gone to various parts of the world the Lufthansa catering, LSG has gone to all parts of the world and they have become multinational giants but the union has not been affected at all so like that lot of restructuring took place and that restructuring has come to India worse than privatization was this restructuring you know there was a time when at the airports all jobs were formal all employees were unionized and those who worked at the airport were considered privileged employees well paid, good service conditions and all that has gone for a toss today 90% of the employees working at airports are not organized and they have got inferior service conditions I mean it's pathetic it's total casualization, contractualization, everything possible and to give you an example like you have these ground handling companies there are about 10 to 15 ground handling companies there when you go to the airport you see thousands of young workers there whether at the check-in counters whether in the loading area whether in the cabin cleaning area you find lots of these young workers all of them get between 10 and 12,000 in the olden days they used to employ in airlines only graduates even 50 years back Indian Airlines used to take graduates today 12th standard is enough to become a cabin crew to become a ground staff and unskilled staff, no education whatsoever so these people get about 8,000-10,000 they are on a three-year contract there is no question of forming a union the contract very clearly stipulates that you will not become a member of a union and if you become a member of the union your employment will cease to exist so in all these companies and then 10 years back government of India came out with a ground handling policy that no airlines can do their own handling so therefore airlines had to give contracts to these ground handling agencies and stop their own ground handling so all these airlines they removed their employees like all these foreign airlines had employees who were working for 15-20 years like Swiss Air or Air France Singapore Airlines all of them told their employees that you leave or you join one of the ground handling companies on their terms and salaries so they had no choice we being the established union we filed cases in the courts we went to labor machinery till date those cases are on but no respite whatsoever and all those employees either left the industry or joined on inferior service conditions and emoluments in those countries in those companies so there has been a sea change you have a company called Celebi it's a Turkish ground handling company so they have these employees so they have one supervisor and 10 employees and one Maruti Van takes them to an aircraft does the entire interior cleaning of the aircraft as soon as that is over they go to another arrival aircraft offload entire baggage from that then they go to a departure aircraft load all the baggage onto that 12 hours non-stop working even to the extent that they don't get breaks for lunch they have all been told to carry something and eat it on the way there's no and attrition rate is so high at the most one and a half, two years they can work when they leave and then fresh set of people come so constant churning of employees is there with so the lifespan of all these employees is very small they work for maximum two years so all the employment that you see in the airport is like that you will have few employees of Air India only who are today this thing and that also is going to be extinct because they have not recruited in the past 15 years so all formal employees will go and you will find only informal employees even to the extent I would say even pilots are as good as bonded labour today if a pilot wants to leave the airline he has to give a one year notice so under no circumstances he can leave and that rule has been brought in by DGCA by the government so therefore his license will go if he opts to leave the airline and no airline will wait for him for one year for him to join them so virtually doors have been closed on them because that was one category which was very powerful but they have also been set in place put in place I recall some time back there was a strike of jet airways pilots which I only handled two of their employees showed the guts to form a union and they registered a union in the name of National Aviators Guild and both of them were promptly dismissed earlier others were dismissed for similar endeavour but this time these people garnered a lot of support and they formed this union and then they were immediately dismissed so when they were dismissed then they came to me and they told me why don't you all help us so then I got into the picture raised a dispute before the Labour Commissioner they came to the Labour Commissioner's office they said we don't know these people there's no way we're going to talk to them we have nothing to do with them and there's no question of taking back the dismissal Labour Commissioner also seemed otherwise he was a very good Labour Commissioner on that day he was a very different person he was totally with the management that you all should not take up this issue at all so then we came out from there and we had served a strike notice that's how it was seized in Constellation he wrote a letter to Labour Commissioner saying that the strike notice has been withdrawn and then told all the pilots to gather in that avion hotel outside the airport about four five hundred pilots came there from morning till evening the next day and then we announced a strike everybody is going to fall sick so one by one and their service condition said that even by SMS, by mail, by phone you can convey if you're sick so all of them you know four or five hundred people and then almost all seven hundred people went on strike and after the strike after about seventh, eighth day the management then gave in and called for discussions and in those discussions you know they agreed because basically we were on a strong point India the signatory to the ILO conventions on freedom of association and there was no way what they were doing was absolutely illegal so they agreed but one shocking thing they showed us you know the funding agreement between Access Bank and Jet Airways very clearly stated that there shall be no union in the pilots, cabin crew and aircraft engineers if there is a union registered in any of these three categories we will withdraw our funding that came as a revelation that you know it goes so deep and they said you know we are helpless if we do this our funding will go and we'll be in a big soup so like that in the aviation industry it has grown manifold but as far as the employees are concerned ninety percent are unorganized service conditions are miserable virtually no service conditions we have somehow held together all the employees of Air India and we have managed because only through courts we have got an order from the court saying that the service conditions and emoluments cannot be unilaterally altered by the management and the management challenged that in the supreme court also after two years upheld our contention and it continues to be in place but I don't know they have come out with so many ways of hitting for the past 8-10 years they have withdrawn the check off system for the union they have withdrawn the offices they have informed all facilities given to all trade unions have been stopped and there the courts have not been helpful at all the courts also have ruled that the unions have no right over all this so slowly slowly this important sector is going to be totally non-unionized somewhere we have also committed lots of sins as we are very complacent in the good days we had lots of power and probably we didn't feel the need to network and you know also you know the connect between academicians and trade union and trade union and national trade union now today NGOs are doing more work than even the national trade union centres and even so somewhere all of us have to sit together and understand that there is such a big problem we are virtually standing with an umbrella when there is a tsunami coming none of us unions can withstand what the onslaught that is you know there so somewhere unless there is a consolidation of all like-minded groups to understand that the future is going to be extremely bad like all the previous speakers in the first session spoke about the quality of employment so what kind of employment it is where every two years people live and you know the management encourages that and even a whiff of somebody having a tendency to form a union will result in employment being you know seized privatisation of Air India is going to come is on the fast track we have now on 12th we are filing a petition in the Delhi High Court on a law point on a law point that when Air India and Indian Airlines was created it was created through an act of parliament Air Corporation Act was introduced when Air Corporation Act was repealed it was through an act of parliament and we came under Companies Act and now this time there is no act of parliament there is only a cabinet approval it's a strong law point and if we succeed it will go it will get deferred by six months to one year which means it will cross 2019 so we are at least hoping to defer it to the extent possible