Three mainstream Bollywood-starrer movie, Crew, portrays the abysmal working conditions of airline crew workers in our country. The movie also depicts the money laundering and eventual insolvency of the airline company, Kohinoor, which further intensified the financial problems of the workers.
The three lead characters played by Tabbu, Kareena Kapoor Khan and Kriti Sanon work as crew members of Kohinoor along with others. As the company slowly plunges into crisis, the crew are the first to feel the pinch. They start facing cuts in flight allowances, then delayed salaries, and they are not even able to obtain a loan from their own provident fund. The workers are caught between the overall job crisis in the economy where finding an alternative, especially for older workers, is next to impossible and the flickering hope offered by the management that the company will recover soon. The story, the names of the owner, the airline as well as the branding lines, is a mishmash of the events that led to the closure of two of India’s fastest growing airlines – Kingfisher and Sahara. The story revolves around the struggle and the shattering hopes of the members of the crew. With wages unpaid for months, workers are forced to withdraw children from private schools (which are symbols of status and good education), default on loans, put aside plans for a better life and future.
The film also highlights the extreme commodification of women’s body as integral to their work. Age, body weight, style, demeanor are treated as more important than their skill to evacuate passengers in case of an emergency. This further makes the workers vulnerable to humiliation and harassment on board, including sexual violence, while the crew struggle without wages to keep the airline afloat.
To cut the Bollywood twist aside, of a comic impossible yet successful heist pulled through by the three protagonists to a happy end, the film portrays the life of grand opulence of the airliner owner as he escapes the country with his ill-gotten gains in sharp contrast to the protesting workers being notified of closure, without being paid even their legal dues.
The airline industry is pivoted on two fundamental myths – it is a well-paid white-collar job and it is a glamorous and easy job. In reality, it is difficult manual labour at all possible hours while maintaining a façade of glamour making the work more difficult to perform. Imagine pushing heavy carts on a factory shopfloor on high heels! That is what airline crews are expected to do.
Research on the aviation industry in Europe and Asia reveals discrimination, precarity of jobs, as well as severe health issues, including mental health, among its workers. Cut-throat competition in the market, force workers to clock in more hours of work to cut costs. A 2015 Study on Employment and Working Conditions in Air Transport and Airports in Europe finds that “the use of temporary agency workers is an established practice for a number of airlines; whilst temporary agency organisations have traditionally been a source of cabin crew and flight crew for low cost carriers, evidence exists of an established network carrier using temporary agency workers based outside the EU (in Asia) for cabin crew and also outsourcing some routes in entirety to a temporary agency (also to be based outside the EU). While there are clear business drivers for this practice, there is also a benefit associated with a significantly”. Further, the report argues that where there are trade unions, they focus on workers on stable employment contracts who usually join the unions. The cabin crew unions are strong compared to other types of workers in the flight and airport staff. A significant number of workers come from Asian countries who face multiple kinds of discrimination both during recruitment and their work life, according to the report. Further, a 2019 report by the Aviation Institute of the University of Nebraska, USA shows that women find disproportionately high representation in low end manual work (Cabin Crew) or white collar jobs (desk clerks) while being almost absent in decision-making roles, managerial, technical, and leadership positions in the industry.
The glamorization induced alienation of workers in the aviation industry makes it difficult for workers in other industries to view them as ‘workers’ just like them while simultaneously this same alienation provides the airline workers with a false consciousness that they are higher in the hierarchy of employees from ordinary blue and white collared workers. This makes it easier for employers, especially in private operators, to prevent unionization as well as struggle for basic worker rights.
Leave a Reply