Strike: Workers adamant, flight delays feared

Font Size -

Reuters

Posted online: Tuesday , March 11, 2008 at 06:42:43
Updated: Tuesday , March 11, 2008 at 07:03:59

New Delhi, March 11: Passengers at airports across India could face delays from Tuesday as thousands of airport employees plan to go ahead with an indefinite strike after talks with the Government broke down.

The strike will affect 127 airports across the country run by the Airports Authority of India (AAI), said M.K. Ghoshal, the general secretary of the AAI employees' union.

About 14,000 union members will strike over the imminent ending of commercial flights at old airports in Hyderabad and Bangalore, both home to many of India's software and outsourcing companies.

New airports with better facilities built by private developers are due to open soon in both cities. The union says that when that happens, staff at the old airports will lose their jobs or get shifted elsewhere.

Talks with the Government and the AAI have so far failed.

"We will not cooperate with the authorities from midnight," he said. "We have to stick to our original plan as the Government has not even bothered to sit across the table and resolve the issue."

Union members are mostly employed in airport support services, and include electricians, plumbers, cleaners, engineers and emergency fire support staff.

A spokeswoman for the civil aviation ministry said no staff would lose their jobs as they will be needed at other airports in the country as they expand and modernise. The AAI could not be reached for comment.

At Delhi airport, about two-thirds of its 2,000 staff belong to the union planning the strike, said airport spokesman Arun Arora.

Arora said the airport, one of the busiest in the country, would try to minimise hassle to passengers.

Bookmark this Page

What is this?

Digg

On Digg, users share intersting online content by submitting links to the site. At that point, the Digg audience can vote on whether or not they think it is interesting. Articles with lots of votes, or "diggs," rise up higher on the site's main page and topical subsection pages. Another form of social sharing, this site also lets users categorize the content they are submitting to Digg and label it with descriptions of up to 350 characters. Digg users can also submit comments on each content item submitted to the site.

To register, go to: http://digg.com/register

del.icio.us

At its most basic level, del.icio.us allows users to save their bookmarks online. Del.icio.us also gives users the ability to "tag" their bookmarks with descriptive category names. For example, someone who has bookmarked multiple Web pages that deal with the Washington Nationals baseball team could tag those links with any terms they want, like "baseball," "nationals," "natsfan," etc.

As members of a "social bookmarking" community, del.icio.us sers can also see how many other people have bookmarked the same pages, and they can look at those users' bookmark collections to find other interesting online content.

To register, go to: http://del.icio.us/register

Reddit

Reddit allows users to submit news articles and other online content to the site. Users also give articles a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Reddit then uses those votes to build a user profile and to find articles to recommend to you. Users can also submit comments on items posted to the site.

To register, go to: http://reddit.com/login

Digg

My Yahoo

Fark

del.icio.us

Newsvine

Rate this Article

Rating

Post Comments

Name*		Email ID*
Subject*		Country*
Message*	Characters remaining

TERMS OF USE: The views represented here are not neccesarily endorsed by www.expressindia.com and its allied websites. All messages will be moderated and no message that has inflammatory, abusive, derogatory language or any language deemed unfit for publication by the editor will be displayed. Though it will be endeavoured that as many messages as possible be displayed, there will be time lag between the submission and publication of the messages. The website reserves the right to publish or reject any message.

I agree to the terms of use.