Fired Jet Airways staff stage protest

Mumbai: About 200 employees fired by top Indian private carrier Jet Airways staged a noisy protest on Thursday, while politicians weighed in on their side, demanding an inquiry into job losses in the struggling industry.

Jet Airways said on Wednesday it would lay off 1,100 staff in the next few days, on top of the 800 flight attendants already retrenched, as part of efforts to cope with slowing demand, high fuel prices and the global credit crunch.

The job losses and protests have struck in an industry at the heart of India's economic modernisation, with millions of middle-class Indians taking to the skies and carriers employing thousands of young men and women in glamorous jobs.

The airlines are asking for the government to bail them out, but the government, already facing a fiscal squeeze, has so far done nothing to help.

Nevertheless, Petroleum Minister Murli Deora said it was the wrong time for Jet to be laying off employees, while Labour and Employment Minister Oscar Fernandes asked for a urgent report.

A spokeswoman for Jet Airways, which had a total staff of around 13,000 people, declined comment.

"We want our jobs back," shouted Jet employees outside the office in Mumbai.

Analysts and activists said the sudden layoffs left the employees, who were mostly on contract or probation, with few options.

"They have been terminated without notice, and they have little by way of legal recourse now," said Vinod Shetty, a lawyer and consumer activist.

They have found support from local party Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, which is reported by local media to be in talks with Jet officials for the reinstatement of employees from the state.

An analyst said job cuts were necessary, as airlines bloated by recent expansion adjust to the new reality of falling demand.

Archaic labour laws

"When the industry is going through a tough time and the airline is posting losses and has no access to capital, it needs to do everything possible to cut costs," said Kapil Kaul, chief executive in India for the Centre for Asia-Pacific Aviation.

Archaic labour laws that make it hard to lay off employees have led to a policy of hiring more contract workers in India, which has sparked protests at the Indian units of the companies Toyota Motor Corp and Honda Motor Co in recent years.

Last month, sacked employees beat to death the India head of an Italian industrial gear manufacturing company near Delhi.

The Indian aviation industry, which had grown at an average annual pace of more than 25 per cent in the past few years in a booming economy, is forecast to post combined losses of nearly $2 billion (Dh7.35 billion) in the year to March 2009. That would be the biggest loss outside the US, the International Air Transport Association has said.

Jet Airways, which has said it expects to break even in the full year to March 2010, has struggled to raise money, with the turbulent market delaying a planned $400 million rights issue as well as a stake sale by founder Naresh Goyal.

Mixed signals at Air India

Air India yesterday said it was considering voluntary leave without pay for some staff for three to five years, even as Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said there would be no retrenchment by the national carrier.

"There will be no retrenchment in Air India," Patel told reporters in Hyderabad on the sidelines of an aviation conference, co-organised by his ministry and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci).

"My sympathies are with those employees laid off by private airlines but this is an issue that other ministries - such as the labour ministry - will have to deal with," he said.

A ministry spokesperson also said in New Delhi that Air India will not retrench staff but those who take up the offer of leave without pay will be taken back if they wished at the same designation and the last pay drawn.

"Nacil (the National Aviation Co of India that owns Air India) is not mulling any layoff. We are considering offering a three to four years leave without pay package to people who opt for it - 15,000 employees are eligible," said the spokesperson.

Air India - which is now the only brand name of the newly formed Nacil after the merger with Indian Airlines - has total staff of around 23,000.

Later, however, Air India's executive director of corporate communication Jitender Bhargava said reports that the airline was mulling leave without pay for as many as 15,000 employees were not correct.