Sam Thomas, looking dapper in his red tie and half-sleeve striped shirt, hardly shows the nervousness of a man who has been sacked by his employer. A couple of days before the pilot finally forced a reluctant Jet Airways to reinstate him after a five-day "sick out" - the official term for mass sick leave by 650 of his colleagues that crippled India's largest private airline, Thomas told Business Standard he was "fighting for dignity and not money".
If Thomas represents the new face of India's trade union leaders (he is the joint secretary of the National Aviators' Guild or NAG, the union of Jet pilots), the old guard isn't short of new-found confidence either.
The past year has seen a rising incidence of labour strife in India, with strikes at Hyundai, Mahindra & Mahindra, Nestle, banks and oil companies. The dissatisfaction varied from delayed wage negotiations to appointment of contract workers to summary dismissal.
Though none of these protests were as violent as the killing of the CEO of an Italian auto component maker by fired workers exactly a year ago, and the scale isn't as big as it used to be in the sixties and seventies, employers are worried by the rising employee unrest that has coincided with the downturn, which saw companies curb production and costs.
Sona Group Chairman Surinder Kapur says the strikes have cropped up because there's a contraction in business. "It's a difficult time to make settlements; we can't give people good increases but their expectations have gone up," he says.
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