Suspended AI employees to be reinstated, Patel tells Yechury

32 Air India employees, who were suspended after a two-day flash strike in May this year, would be reinstated, Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel assured CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury today.

"He (Patel) assured me that the issues have to be resolved with the unions. As a gesture and the first step, all the employees suspended will be reinstated," Yechury told PTI after holding telephonic discussion with Patel.

The CPI(M) leader, who heads the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture that also reviews the civil aviation sector, said talks would continue on other issues like sacking of other employees and de-recognition of two unions, Air Corporation Employees Union (ACEU) and All India Aircraft Engineers Association, which led the stir.
    
Consequent to this assurance, the Minister will be holding discussions with the representatives of employees unions soon, Yechury said.
    
Yechury and his senior party colleague M K Pandhe have been in negotiations with Patel and other officials on the issue for the past several weeks.
    
Barely three days after the May 22 Mangalore aircrash, the employees of Air India had gone on a flash strike against a "gag order" on them for talking to the media on the accident and to protest the "delay" in payment of salaries.
    
Following the strike, Air India management had sacked a total of 55 employees including union leaders, suspended another 32 and de-recognised two unions -- ACEU and AIAEA which had led the stir. The strike was called off after Delhi High Court restrained the agitators.
    
In another development, Air India CMD Arvind Jadhav informed Yechury that the workers, categorised as surplus in Centaur Hotel Srinagar, would not be retrenched. The hotel is part of AI subsidiary, Hotel Corporation of India.
    
Yechury, who was part of the all-party parliamentary delegation that visited Jammu and Kashmir last month, had demanded that Centre take urgent measures to create employment opportunities in the state.
    
As a confidence building measure, the government should strengthen the central PSUs in the state instead of resorting to any retrenchment and closure, he said.
    
The assurance that the Centaur Hotel staff would not be retrenched "will hopefully work as a gesture in bridging the trust deficit between the people of the state and the government," the CPI(M) leader said.