PIA employees making hue and cry without logic

LAHORE: Government adopted the right attitude to deal with PIA employees’ strike by vowing not to give in to their demands. However, the mess created at the airports indicates that its planners were not prepared to ward off the impact of the strike.

The planners are busy in firefighting to minimise the impact of the total stoppage of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flights. They are requesting other airlines to bring the stranded PIA’s passengers at foreign airports. Any prudent planners would have anticipated the reaction of employees who resorted to similar practices on petty issues in recent past. The arrangement that they are trying to make with other domestic and international airlines should have been made much earlier. Had the passenger been looked after through other airlines, the strike’s impact would have been minimal.

The government stance on PIA privatisation is still commendable, but there is a fear that in view of hardships faced by the passengers the rulers may compromise. They should go the way British Prime Minister Margret Thatcher, the Iron lady, did in 1980’s when she brushed aside anti-privatisation resistance by the UK workers and put the British economy back on the sustainable growth path.

There is no way the airline could be restructured without changing the management that is free from the dictates of bureaucracy. The airline has the highest number of employees per aircraft, but it faces shortage of pilots and engineers. 

According to the Pakistan Air Line Pilots’ Association (Palpa), the shortage of pilots is a security risk as the available pilots have to work beyond the international flight time limitation. The past records show that when perks and increase in salaries are denied to these pilots they opt to go by the book and leave the flights midway when the flying time limit exceeds the international standard. They argue that it is against the passengers’ safety to operate with the same crew beyond the permissible flying time limits. The pilots see no harm in risking the safety of the passengers.

The flag carrier is one of the few state-owned enterprises that have assets much lower than its total liabilities. The airline has been running at loss for over a decade. The loss-making airline, during this period, continued to negotiate and implement pay raises of its employees along with increase in other perks. 

The union and pilot association’s behavior was against the responsible behavior shown, for example, by the unions in the United States. The union in General Motors unilaterally kept their wages freeze for many years to help the company make a turnaround.  Contrarily, the PIA employees are demanding that the airline should be handed to them for one year before going for any other option, assuring that they will turn around the carrier.

An analysis of all state-owned enterprises shows that the restructuring is impossible. Successive governments tried to restructure Habib Bank and United Bank for around a decade but when these institutions were privatised even the money that the government poured in for restructuring was not recovered. Similarly, several attempts were made to restructure Pakistan Steel Mills, Pakistan Railways and PIA and after each phase these entities ended up with much higher recurring losses. The bureaucracy has a say in operations of all the state-owned enterprises. They enjoy numerous perks and privileges that are not available to them as bureaucrats. It is simply not in their interest that these loss-making institutions are privatised. 

The state-owned institutions incur heavy losses because the bureaucracy and the upper management are minting money. The best solution is to hand over the management of these units to a private operator by selling at least 26 percent of its share. The allegation that the rulers want to hand over these institutions to their cronies carry no weight because the actual reserve price of every institution to be privatised is determined by foreign consultants of unblemished reputation.  PIA was once a great airline and its staff assisted Emirates in operation. The Emirates is now one of the world’s most successful air carriers. It is professionally run despite that it is also a government-owned entity. There are no political appointments. Numbers of employees per aircraft are at par with the international standards. 

PIA, on the other hand, is plagued with political appointments made by every government that came to power. Most of the appointments were made without merit that increased inefficiencies. It is surprising that inefficient employees oppose privatisation despite full assurance that their employment will be protected.