NEWDELHI: The Justice Dharmadhikari Committee, which was appointed by the Civil Aviation Ministry to resolve personnel issues of Air India and bring about a pay parity between the employees of the erstwhile airlines, is stumped on solutions for the national carrier.
While the basic consensus amongst the members of the committee is to pay all the employees as per the public enterprise norms (Air India is a public enterprise), bringing about a complete parity in the mergers of the Indian Airlines and Air India seems an impossible task.
After meeting 20 odd unions, the DGCA, Air India management, ministry officials and a host of other independent agencies, the committee is now going to brainstorm and come up with some broad parameters.
Justice Dharmadhikari was appointed to resolve the merger issues in Air India after the erstwhile Indian Airlines pilots went on strike earlier in 2011.
While the onerous task of bringing about an effective merger that had just taken place in papers was to come to an end in December, the committee bought time till January. However, solutions don’t seem to be in sight.
“Over the years, Indian Airlines and Air India have functioned under so many different regulations that it is impossible to accommodate everything in one solution,” said a ministry official.