PIA: living in denial.

THE PIA management's decision to annul working agreements with various employees' associations may have been sudden but not unexpected. The present PIA management, which chose Labour Day to derecognise these associations with immediate effect, was showing signs of impatience with some of these groups, especially the one representing the airline's pilots, for some time. Indeed, almost all these associations were without legal bargaining rights and operated as pressure groups to protect the interests of the company's officers and other staffers including pilots, cabin crew, engineers, etc who were not represented as such by the Collective Bargaining Agent. So for the time being these groups no longer enjoy quasi-legal, collective representation unless a court grants them relief against their employer's decision.

The airline made the decision a day after the government placed it under the Pakistan Essential Services (Maintenance) Act, 1952, for six months to allow it to rescue, evacuate and repatriate thousands of Pakistanis still stranded in different countries. The government and the PIA management evidently felt that the persistent demands of pilots and cabin crew for better...

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