Jet has claimed that the pilots who called in sick en masse are on strike. "The airlines sent doctors on Tuesday morning to the houses of a few of the pilots, but they were refused entry,'' Jet's senior counsel Harish Salve argued. Salve pointed to Supreme Court judgments which held that a concerted activity of a group to abstain from work was held to be a strike. Salve also said that the "strike'' was called suddenly in the middle of negotiations. "The Industrial Disputes Act prohibits employees from going on strike when conciliation proceedings are pending,'' Salve said.
Assignment2 A
Referring to communications between the airlines and the union on the issue of the strike, he said that on August 27, 2009, the conciliation officer had addressed a letter initiating conciliation proceedings. Eleven days later on September 7, the union sent a letter withdrawing the strike. "In spite of this, the pilots called in sick,'' said Salve.
Assignment2 B
By afternoon, the airline started exploring options to crush the pilots' protest and approached the home secretary and civil aviation ministry seeking intervention. The civil aviation ministry decided not to intervene and asked the airline to sort out the matter with its pilots. But it asked the airline to ensure that passengers were refunded fully or accommodated on other airlines.
Assignment3
Home secretary G K Pillai wrote to the chief secretaries of all states asking them to review the situation with regard to the "wildcat'' strike by the Jet Airways pilots. "The secretaries were asked to see whether there is a necessity to invoke the provisions of Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA),'' said a government release.
Assignment4
When TOI spoke to Justice V R Krishna Iyer, former Supreme Court judge, he said, "According to me, ESMA cannot be invoked for a single airline. That would amount to discrimination. They will have to treat all air services as essential.'' It would mean that the August 18 strike earlier planned by the Federation of Indian Airlines could have come under the provisions of ESMA, but it would not apply in this case.
Course Notes
Later in the day, Jet Airways started sending its doctors to the pilot's residences. "The airline examined about 22 pilots and asked those who were fit to resume duty,'' said a pilot. "A pilot who feels that he is under any kind of stress can decline to fly, in the interest of flight safety,'' said air safety expert Capt Mohan Ranganathan adding that this may not fit into the definition of sickness in the medical category. "If you look at the countries where safety is paramount, you will find that they accept a pilot's word when he says he feels he is not in a mental frame of mind to operate a flight safely,'' he added.
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"I'm apologetic for the trouble caused to the passengers. If the airline chooses to, it can put an end to this inconvenience by reinstating the two dismissed pilots. They have asked us to dismantle our union in return and we cannot accept that,'' said Capt Girish Kaushik, president of the National Aviators Guild (NAG), the Jet Airways pilots' union, early on Tuesday.