On September 8, 2009, hundreds of pilots of Jet Airways, the country’s largest private airlines, went on an indefinite strike. They have effectively brought the entire national and international services of Jet Airways to a halt.

Why have the pilots gone on strike? The immediate reason is that as soon as the pilots of the airlines formed a union in July, the owners of Jet Airways dismissed two pilots who were among the main organizers of the Union. The pilots are demanding immediate reinstatement of their dismissed colleagues. They have also asked the management to recognize their union, the National Aviators Guild. On the other hand, the management of Jet Airways is hell bent on smashing the union and increasing the exploitation of the pilots. It must be noted that ever since the recession hit the airlines industry, the management of Jet Airways has been trying to (1) retrench pilots, air hostesses, and other staff (2) increase the workload of the existing workers (3) reduce their salaries and perks. It is in these conditions that the pilots of Jet airways formed their union.

The Central government’s machinery, the courts, as well as the bourgeois media have swung into action, painting the pilots as the villains of the piece, for disrupting air services. However, all these agencies are silent about the role of the owners and management of the airlines, who are attacking the rights of the pilots and other employees, including the right to form a union. Are they not the actual villains of the piece, refusing to address the just demands of the pilots and other employees of the airlines? The bourgeois media is trying to make out that the pilots are a ‘privileged lot’, ‘holding the country to ransom’. This is the same old propaganda that is regularly dished out to attack the struggles of doctors, teachers, bank employees, employees of PSUs and many other sections of the working people. Its aim is to divide the fighting sections of the working people from others and exonerate the real culprits, the capitalist owners and managements as well as the government, who are systematically attacking the rights of one section of the working people after another.

The Jet pilots have boldly declared that forming a union is their constitutional right as workmen. Their struggle has been supported by pilots of other airlines as well. Meanwhile, the Mumbai High Court is threatening to prosecute the pilots for being on strike during conciliation proceedings, a move that the Jet Airways pilots are creatively trying to avert by declaring themselves on ‘sick leave’. It must be noted that the conciliation proceedings are routinely used by managements to prevent workers from fighting for their rights, while the management is free to use the time to attack the workers.

According to news reports, the government is considering an amendment to the Industrial Disputes Act to move pilots out of the category of ‘workmen’! The Civil Aviation Ministry has put up a proposal for the amendment of the Act. This moves comes at a time when pilots and other employees of Air India, the state owned airlines, have also been fighting against attacks on their wages and working conditions.

Indian working class has been waging a protracted struggle over the definition of workman, apart from other things. Every one who works for a wage by selling his or her labour power is a workman. However the capitalist class and the government has repeatedly tried to narrow the definition based on fraudulent considerations including so called emoluments of the person.

Pilots are presently classified as workmen according to Supreme Court ruling. Air India, whose pilots went on strike in 2003, has repeatedly sought changes in the Act. In May 2008, Jet Airways approached the Supreme Court over the same issue.

People's Voice supports the just struggle of the pilots against the attack on their livelihood and working conditions and in defence of the right to form a union.