Air India CEO Campbell Wilson to meet employees to discuss eviction from former staff housing this week

Campbell Wilson (Illustration - Suneesh Kalarickal)

Air India’s newly appointed chief executive officer and managing director Campbell Wilson is expected to meet employees residing in colonies that the airline owned in Mumbai and Delhi this week.

Wilson is expected to meet representatives of Air India’s unions in order to expedite the process of moving out of these housing estates, multiple people aware of the development said.

“Despite Air India announcing reimbursement of expenses to employees to vacate the former colonies, employees are still not ready to move and the management wants to meet with them to come to a solution,” an Air India official said.

He added that Wilson is looking to work on the issue personally in order to resolve the situation as soon as possible and not wait for a court settlement.

The Air Corporation Employees Union, Aviation Industry Employees Guild and All India Service Engineers Association had gone on strike in November last year protesting against the move. The issue is now pending before the Bombay High Court.

The Bombay High Court is likely to hear the petition filed by the Air India employee's union on August 10, no verdict has been announced by the High Court yet.

In October 2021, prior to the completion of Air India’s privatisation process, the airline had sought an undertaking from 1,600 employees residing in the quarters located in the Kalina area of Mumbai and Vasant Vihar area of Delhi that they would vacate the premises within six months of Air India being privatised.

Another official aware of the discussion said that Air India is looking to improve its relationship with its employees as nearly 6,000 of Air India’s total 8,000 permanent employees are expected to retire in the next two years.

“After around 4,500 employees opted in for retirement under the voluntary retirement scheme, the airline’s management is not looking to let go of any more employees,” the second official said.

He added that Air India’s top management and the Tata Group are looking to hire new talent but also do not want to create a bad reputation among its current employees.

Last month, Moneycontrol reported that several senior Air India employees including pilots, cabin crew, ground-handling staff, engineering crew and even employees involved on the administration side are starting to feel out of place at the airline, after having worked there for decades.

In July, Air India had announced a reimbursement package of up to Rs 1 lakh towards expenses employees would incur in relocating.

As part of the package, employees residing in former Air India colonies would be entitled to reimbursement of expenses such as movement of household goods within 100 km and brokerage for rent of up to one month with a maximum limit of Rs 30,000.

The airline was also offering expenses incurred towards admission of the affected staff’s children in new schools of up to Rs 50,000 per child and reimbursements of two nights’ hotel stay subject to a limit of Rs 5,000.

Employees had the option of taking up the offer till July 31.

Air India’s residential colonies in Mumbai were handed over to Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL) after the privatisation of Mumbai airport in 2005. Similarly, as part of its deal to sell Air India to the Tata Group, the central government had retained non-core assets of Air India, such as the Vasant Vihar housing colony, Air India Building at Nariman Point in Mumbai and Air India Building in New Delhi.

The government had last year announced that it will look to monetise the four subsidiaries and the non-core assets of Air India after the airline’s privatisation was complete. The privatisation process was completed in January-end, thereby giving employees of Air India till the end of July to vacate their residential quarters.

The Adani Group-operated MIAL said that the area in question includes around 750,000 square metres of airport land in the Kalina and Sahar areas of Mumbai.

MIAL had even issued a notice to Air India on March 11 asking the airline to review its land use and negotiate licence agreements on an arm’s length basis with its former ground handling and engineering subsidiaries and surrender the remaining land and space to MIAL. Air India was given 45 days from receiving the letter to make a decision.

Employees of Air India have demanded that they should be allowed to live in the residential quarters of the airline till their retirement.