Bombay HC stays AI communication seeking to stop union meet

The Bombay High Court today issued an interim order staying a communication by the Air India management seeking to deny employees' unions the use of a school hall inside the airline's colony here for holding a meeting to discuss the proposed privatisation.
Seven AI employees' unions, representing ground and commercial staff and engineers among others, have called the meeting on November 4.
Air Corporation Employees Union (ACEU), one of these unions, booked the school hall at the Air India Colony in suburban Kalina for the meeting.
On October 30, the personnel department of Air India wrote to the authorities that manage the school and demanded that the permission granted to use the hall be revoked.

The ACEU approached the high court against this communication, and said it should be permitted to organise the meeting as scheduled.
ACEU's lawyer Anil Kumar argued that the October 30 communication was arbitrary and unfair.

In the absence of formal notification from the AI management and the government about the privatisation proposal, the employees merely wished to discuss the likely effects and ramifications of the disinvestment so as to quell their own anxiety, he said.
Air India, on the other hand, argued that it was a private meeting and ACEU could not use the school hall, a property owned by the airline, for it.

A bench of justices Shantanu Kemkar and G S Kulkarni, however, noted that considering that the employees were to meet merely for a discussion, and had made the booking well in advance, there existed no reason to restrain them from holding the meeting.
The bench accordingly granted an interim injunction (stay) to the October 30 communication issued by AI.
When contacted, an Air India spokesperson said it would abide by the court's order.
On June 28, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) gave an in-principle approval for strategic disinvestment of Air India and five of its subsidiaries.
These seven Air India unions, which have formed 'Air India Union Joint Forum Against Privatisation', have already expressed their opposition to the proposal.