Mumbai: Air India pilots demand roll back of blanket ban on posting on social media

Air India’s union of Airbus pilots — Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) — has appealed to its management to roll back their policy that does not allow any Air India employee, whether serving or retired, to post anything on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, WhatsApp or Twitter, blogs or video channels, be it during or after duty hours. ICPA has termed the policy to be entirely illegal and with no basis in law.

Air India’s union of Airbus pilots — Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) — has appealed to its management to roll back their policy that does not allow any Air India employee, whether serving or retired, to post anything on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, WhatsApp or Twitter, blogs or video channels, be it during or after duty hours. ICPA has termed the policy to be entirely illegal and with no basis in law.

Air India building at Nariman Point in Mumbai. (HT FILE)

Despite repeated attempts, Air India did not respond to HT’s queries.

Besides other restrictions, the pilots, in a letter to its chairman and managing director Rajiv Bansal, raised concerns on getting approval from the airline even for uploading personal content related to Air India or any of its activities. The pilots also pointed out that the policy implemented from March 1 this year states that the airline has rights to monitor comments or discussions about them, their employees, clients and the industry posted on the internet.

The pilots said that India currently has no law that either empowers or remotely justified such an act by the employer, especially Air India being a state instrumentality under Article 12 of the Constitution, to impose such a blanket ban on the use of social media.

The letter read, “While we note the concerns that Air India may have in respect of protecting its image over social/digital media, especially preceding its proposed disinvestment, the introduction of a policy as the present one, is entirely unheard of and infringes upon various rights of its employees. It goes on to categorically state that it covers conduct of employees as private participants on social media platforms, thereby making it patently illegal. The present Policy introduced by Air India, is most importantly, violative of the fundamental right of freedom and speech, guaranteed to the employees of Air India, under Article 19 (1) (a) of the Constitution, being citizens of India.”

The pilots said, “Even assuming for a moment that Air India still has the authority and the power to introduce the present blanket policy, the same is expressly hit by the bar under section 9A of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, and cannot be allowed to subsist.”

Stating the law in detail, the pilots reiterated that the introduction and enforcement of the policy by Air India without any consultation, discussion, notice or any other form of communication with the employees, will result in multiple violations by them and hence asked them to drop the policy.

Aviation expert Mohan Ranganathan said, “Abusing the uniform in any situation is not accepted. Hence, if Air India has specified to not upload posts in the airline’s uniform, they are right. However, restricting personal posts unrelated to Air India is not accepted in any situation and is against one’s fundamental rights. Air India is run by the government, and restricting employees to even comment on posts and keeping a record of their activities on digital social media platforms is because they are dancing to the tune of the minister. They should be taking strict action against safety violators rather than coming up with such things.”