India’s Supreme Court has instructed bankrupt Jet Airways (Mumbai International) and its new owner, the Jalan-Kalrock Consortium, to reinstate 169 of its temporary workers with full back wages, The Economic Times newspaper and the Indian legal news site Verdictum reported.
The grounded and indebted carrier cannot waive the provisions of the Bombay Model Standing Order, a legal provision that protects the rights of workers, the court ruled quashing earlier judgements to the contrary at the Bombay High Court and the Central Government Industrial Tribunal.
The two-judge bench at the Supreme Court held that “a workman who has worked for 240 days in an establishment would be entitled to be made permanent, and no contract/settlement which abridges such a right can be agreed upon, let alone be binding.” The judges added that under Indian legislation, any agreement, contract, or settlement in which the rights of employees are waived “cannot override the Standing Orders.”
According to the court’s reading of the Bombay Model Standing Order, an employee who has worked at a company for 240 days is entitled to be made permanent - in contradiction with the Bombay High Court which had ruled that completing this term would not entitle staff to claim permanency.
The consortium had argued, through its lawyers, that workers who were temporarily engaged on a fixed-term contract should be treated as temporary by the airline even if they had completed this number of days of uninterrupted service. They were not entitled to permanent jobs as the airline union had in 2002 signed a deal abandoning a demand for permanent jobs in return for other benefits, it alleged.
The restart of Jet Airways has been shackled by other labour disputes. As ch-aviation previously reported, the Jalan-Kalrock Consortium lodged a Supreme Court appeal against a December 2022 decision by India’s National Company Law Appellate Tribunal directing it to settle unpaid provident fund and salary debts to a large number of the carrier’s permanent employees.
