By the Editor: Siddharth Sehgal

Far away from electoral fanfare,  people are not much aware about a topic that is just as important as national elections. You may not now but one of the biggest private airline in India has closed its operations for good but in the ongoing feud among Jet management, buyers and banks for the struggling airline, twenty thousand employees of Jet have been largely ignored by all the involved parties and that is what we are going to discuss today, if any of your family member or friends work in a private firm then you should think seriously about plight of those 20000 employees.

Running an airline is not an easy business, not only in India but also in other parts of the world but the airline companies in our country have a largely opaque ways of doing things. Things would seem to be going normal when suddenly out of the blue everything comes crashing down.  Whether its Sahara airlines, Kingfisher or Air Deccan all have to close or sell out because the money simply disappeared but when you look closely as to why and where the money had gone you’ll find a mix of poor management, lack of vision, debt,  greed and a good amount of questionable business practices. In fact, you might still be getting offers from Jet in you mail or phone on how you can plan your summer holidays with them. Whatever lies at the root of the problem, it’s the employees who suffer the most. They often take pay cuts or without pay only to find that they will not be given their dues because they are last in the list of repo men. We do not have laws in this country that protect employees in the private sector. Yes, things go wrong in business but there should be some sort of life boat for the employees should the ship starts sinking.

Absorbing twenty thousand works will not be easy and I am sure most of the employees will have mouths to feed and bills to pay. This can happen to anyone, it could be you, me or anyone else and this is what we should be asking our elected representatives. Why we do not have strong labor policies in our countries, why benefits that are extended to a company that is going under is not afforded to employees who are left out in the open. They should get a chance to defer their loans or bills and other unemployment practices when the are out of job because company couldn’t stay afloat. One may say that is not practical but precisely that is the argument industry groups and lobbyists give when there is a demand for strong labor laws.

Let’s take a stand to stand with the Jet employees.