The Descent of Air India (5 page)

The courts had changed the retirement age of air hostesses, allowing them to work after becoming mothers. While there is nothing wrong with mothers being a part of the crew, as is the case in many international airlines, the problem was with ensuring that the physical standards mandatory for hostesses were adhered to by everyone. Air India lacked the authority to impose discipline as some other airlines, such as some Southeast Asian airlines, were known to do in similar circumstances and it was commonly seen that air hostesses became lax about their appearance as they advanced in years and especially after they came back from their maternity leaves. While the court order had given air hostesses the right to continue work post-motherhood, the hostesses had not been responsible enough and the airline not firm enough to ensure that the standards of weight, grooming and performance were met. In the end, passengers suffered and Air India lost out. The management had also been lax with the selection of the cabin crew, whereby people who had neither the qualifications nor the exposure or aptitude for the job were inducted. The department had allowed external interference in the selection, and more importantly, allowed unions to enjoy a veto right on any changes that the management wanted to introduce to enhance the product.

Indiscipline at every level had ruined the department. The employees I spoke with also pointed out the disturbing rise in in-flight pilferage and the management’s inability to check this. Senior members of the in-flight team cited instances of crew members being poorly groomed and overweight. With so many dilutions, the decline in Air India’s service standards was only to be expected.

The time I spent as an understudy helped me understand the problems. Listening to people’s grievances, I realised that there was a growing disenchantment within the department over the ways of the union leaders, who had become stronger even as the management had grown weak. Every change in work practice or service procedure, even if it was a minor one, had to be ratified by the union leadership. In most instances, the union would refuse to let the changes go through and if they did, it would be after exacting a hefty price in terms of additional allowances, concessions on the work front for their members or demands that disciplinary actions initiated against their members be rescinded. If the management persisted with any change not sanctioned by the union leadership or opposed their stand, they would promptly launch a flash strike or a long-drawn agitation, which would delay flights or create hurdles in the smooth operation of the flights. What was worse was that the AICCA had been allowed to set up their office in the In-flight Services Department’s new office complex. This allowed their leaders to keep a close watch on the members and identify those that dared go against their diktat. There was also regular interference in the working of the department. The more I heard these accounts and studied the situation, I felt that the unions were not only being unreasonable but were deliberately destroying the airline, corroding its reputation and driving away future passengers. They were bolstered by their belief that passengers would continue to fly Air India because they had no other choice. They were clearly being short-sighted.

It was not going to be easy, but as the head of the department, I had to address the issues that were dragging the airline down. I finally took charge on the first day of February 1993 and initiated efforts to bring in a change in the department’s functioning in a calibrated manner. Reclaiming from the union in the shortest possible time the management’s right to manage the department was of top priority. Action had to be concurrently initiated on improving the product profile. Working on the established dictum that stagnancy was the first sign of decay, I devised a three-pronged strategy to usher in change. The first stage was to work on areas that were not in direct conflict with the union’s priorities. For instance, we introduced new crockery on all flights to replace the 22-year-old sets that were in use at the time, redesigned all customer interfaces to bring in brand uniformity, began screening BBC news on the flights and so on. In the second phase, we decided to venture into spaces where the union would have minor interest—such as upgrading the food and alcohol served on flights, making minor modifications to the duty-free range and upgrading the quality of announcements. The final stage would be where we would steamroll changes that would evoke union outrage but were necessary for the company.

The AICCA opposed every move. Even the change of crockery was resisted, because they saw it as an imposition and protested over not being consulted. Not only was the rationale absurd, it amounted to falsehood because members of the cabin crew who had been promoted to the management ranks were the ones who had decided on Royal Doulton crockery to best reflect the airline’s image. Besides, what difference did the shape, size or brand of crockery make to the crew members?

Magnifying the issue was the fact that the union did not allow disciplinary action against errant crew members. They asked all members to refuse being subjected to various mandatory programmes and checks that were part of the organisation’s way of maintaining the airline’s standards. For instance, if a crew member failed the breathalyser check, the union wanted him to be pardoned;if a passenger complained about rude crew behaviour, they always blamed the passenger and would not let the management act against the accused crew member. If the crew members were overweight and we tried to enforce a fitness regimen for the cabin crew, the AICCA protested. When, consequently, overweight crew members began to be grounded, the union asked its members to boycott weight checks, even though they had signed an agreement that allowed for it. Their reasoning was bizarre—they blamed the management for not providing gym facilities close to the crew member’s place of stay. When crew members failed the refresher courses that were conducted regularly to upgrade skills, the AICCA asked its members to stop going for them. The union would not even allow the pilots to check the crew’s knowledge of safety features on board an aircraft. In addition, while the crew of all airlines, including the Indian Airlines, wore name tags, the AICCA opposed this on the specious plea that passengers would contact and harass air hostesses at hotels abroad if they knew their names.

In the first year, I faced the brunt of this irresponsible and wilfully destructive behaviour of the union leaders. The AICCA tied up the airline in an endless series of knots by issuing directives that hindered the routine working of the airline and destroyed the morale of the people involved. The union’s directives were like commands that could not be ignored or overruled by the crew or the management. The slightest deviation could mean a flight being grounded or the launch of an indefinite non-cooperation with the management. And if a crew member dared disobey the orders, he or she would be harassed till they either toed the line or apologised. The union refused to see reason or face the reality of a market that was moving away from Air India.

Consider some of the directives to see how unreasonable they were. The one issued on 21 December 1993, for instance, said that crew members could go on leave at any time. They would not have to give advance notice and, by implication, could walk out of a flight at the very last minute. This directive, when seen in the context of an earlier agreement, which said that a flight was not allowed to take off without a full crew complement, ensured that the unions had the power to ground a flight if their demands were not met or if they wanted to hold the management to ransom. All they had to do was ask one of their members to opt out of a flight just before take-off, which they did quite frequently, and the management would have to come scrambling to their doorstep. On several occasions, the in-flight service officers posted at the airport had to call me up in the dead of night to report that the crew complement rule was leading to a flight delay and I would have to speak to the union leaders for a waiver or convince an air hostess who had been promoted to the officer grade—and was therefore not a member of the union—to fly instead.

In another directive, the union leaders stipulated that the crew would not proceed towards the aircraft until the entire crew had assembled in the Cabin Crew Movement Control Office that was located in the airport terminal. This inevitably led to fight delays, because if even one member was late due to traffic or heavy rains or for any other reason, the entire crew had to wait in the office. They could not get on the aircraft or initiate the pre-departure formalities or begin boarding the passengers. The union gained nothing from such directives, which were not just arbitrary but also resulted in great inconvenience to passengers.

The unions were strengthened by the weakness of previous departmental heads and the ineptness of the HR department. The issues they raised were trivial and seemed to be nothing more than attempts to achieve personal gain at the airline’s cost. There was a time when the AICCA had clashed with the pilots’ union over its demand for a common colour and fabric for the uniforms of cabin crew and pilots. The pilots said that this would cause identity problems, because the security teams and the general public were not always aware that the difference in cadre was shown by the number of epaulets on the shoulders of the uniforms. Colours helped establish the distinction and ensured smooth functioning, according to the Indian Pilots’ Guild, but the AICCA refused to budge from its stand which led to a delay in the allocation of new uniforms. Notwithstanding the role that they had played in the delay, the union leaders then asked the cabin crew to operate flights in civilian clothes!

Increasingly, the AICCA was not just hampering the smooth running of the airline but endangering its very existence. For instance, the union had laid down a condition that only senior air hostesses should be allowed to serve fliers in the first and business classes. This took away the management’s privilege of assigning the best person to the job. Seniority did not always ensure better service, but the management caved in to the union’s demand and the passengers suffered. In another instance, the union stipulated that the cabin crew would not be allowed to deviate from the flight roster. They had to fly only those flights that had been assigned to them as part of the published schedule, further diminishing the flexibility that the management had with respect to flight schedules and duty rosters. Why was this critical for Air India? It denied the management the flexibility needed to ensure the smooth operation of flights. There were times when due to operational exigencies, the management would ask the crew to operate a flight other than the one assigned. Care was also taken to reassign the crew to similar flights. For instance, if they were on the roster for a same-day return flight, the exchange would be for another with same-day return and climatic conditions would also be matched accordingly. Thus, if the crew members had not carried woollen clothing as they had to fly to a warm destination, the management would not send them on a flight to a cold place. The AICCA stipulation prevented the crew from changing flights should the need arise, and they were told to stick to the roster. All of this affected passengers, who were growing increasingly tired of the indifferent service on board Air India’s flights. With the advent of foreign airlines, they found that they had a choice and began to abandon Air India. Not only did the union not care about the operational problems that such behaviour caused, they were also not concerned with the declining work ethic of the department.

Air India was gradually being pushed to a situation where every day in the life of its managers began to resemble the theatre of the absurd. The union, to portray itself as all-powerful to the members, made it impossible for the department to function. Management attention was continually focused on routine and employee-related problems instead of on creating an effective plan for piloting the airline in the increasingly competitive airspace.

The union, however, did not have the support of all the cabin crew members. There were many who were keen to serve the airline’s best interests but were afraid of being targeted by the leaders if they fell out of line. Those who stood up to the union would be harassed by being denied flights to better and more remunerative destinations, when the practice of paying the cabin crew a daily allowance was prevalent. Or the union would punish them by rejecting their requests for a change of duty for personal convenience and such other measures. This began affecting employee morale and made them believe that the union leaders, rather than the department or the airline, were controlling their lives and careers. My predecessors in the department had, unfortunately, ceded control over flight scheduling as ‘a measure of goodwill’ to the union leaders. What was a legitimate management role had been usurped by the union, much like what was happening in the rest of the organisation.

Union activists would routinely use screaming and shouting as a protest tool and the final assault would be to storm the office of the departmental head to seek the immediate reversal of disciplinary orders against a crew member. If their wishes were not met, they would hinder the smooth operation of flights. Time and again, the management and the crew had to succumb to their blackmailing tactics. Every attempt at change was resisted vociferously and vehemently. Clearly, if Air India’s in flight service is not what it used to be, the self-serving union leaders have played a huge role.

I decided to take the unions on, with full support from Mr Deveshwar, who had approved the three-phased action plan. Initially, we tried to persuade the union leaders to see reason by engaging with them and explaining the consequences of their actions, the market realities and the need for Air India to set its house in order. But they responded with threats and strikes. The next step, inspired by my experience with Mr Gujral’s handling of the coal mafia and the unions in Coal India, was to brook no protest. Mr Gujral would often tell us that unions were never strong; it was the managements that were weak and I decided not to be weak.