From Tufail Abbas to Sohail Baluch, the way of the union

Tufail Abbas is 88 years old. He cannot move, can barely hear and his memory has faded. But whatever little he recalls, he talks about passionately. And when it comes to talking about his union days, he tries to get up to make an impact: "Went to jail many times…so many times." There is no sign of regret on his face.

Fortunately, he compiled many of his experiences in a memoir Subah Ki Lagan (Yearning for dawn) published in 2010.

Abbas's footprint on PIA is immense. He played an important role in the way the management dealt with employees for nearly 40 years.

As far back as 1949, an active employees' union was making its presence felt in Orient Airways. In March that year, workers had gone on probably the first strike in the country's first airline over a disagreement with the management. Abbas had joined the organisation a few months before and was unwittingly being driven to join the union.

Over the next few years, he would be jailed multiple times for his union activities and the government's fear of 'communist troublemakers'.

His account tells us about the important role the union played in the airline’s development. The union had mounted pressure to get rid of foreign staff, which held all the key positions in Orient Airways, and later PIA, up until the mid-1950s. It was also because of the union that most of the staff was hired on a permanent basis in PIA when it acquired Orient's assets.

More significantly, it tells about the close relationship that the union and the management had in those days. When questions rose about comparable salaries of employees in other airlines, it was Nur Khan who sent union leader Abbas along with the personnel head (known as the HR Director now) to India to see how Air India was compensating employees.

Nur Khan went as far as to visit jailed union leaders and get them out on a number of occasions. His close interaction with the union people is one of the key reasons Nur Khan attained such a legendary status in PIA.

Successive managements will continue to coordinate with the union and its leaders whenever employees would go on strike or some challenge needed to be tackled: for instance, the difficult decision of cutting the size of PIA's workforce after the secession of East Pakistan.

Unionised workers will also force many CEOs out of office. Since 2005, at least four of them have had to quit directly or indirectly because of differences with the union.

While PIA has had many strong union leaders over the years, one name has come to dominate the scene – Sohail Baluch. Baluch did not have an average childhood. His parents separated when he was very young and most of his years as a young adult were spent with his maternal grandparents.

"I always wanted to be a pilot," he said in a recent interview. When the time came to get the commercial pilot license (CPL), he was lucky to get a scholarship from the Balochistan government which covered most of the cost. "I still had to sell my grandmother’s jewelry and my Yamaha 200 bike to pay the remainder of the fee."

Baluch joined PIA in March 1986. By 1996-97 he was elected to the executive committee of Pakistan Airlines Pilots Association (PALPA). But he would come in the limelight some ten years later.

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) had come into power and by mid-2008 unions were gearing up for elections of the collective bargaining agent after a gap of many years (union activity remained largely inactive during the government of General Pervez Musharraf).

Another pilot, Captain Aijaz Haroon, had been appointed as the Managing Director. And very soon he would come head-to-head with Sohail Baluch, who had won the elections to become the Vice President of PALPA.

The general impression at the time was that Haroon would accommodate the pilots' association. But that was not to be. Haroon says he was never fond of PALPA’s leadership and its activities. "Pilots who became part of PALPA were people who were generally weak," he would later tell The Express Tribune.

It is important to mention here that unions of pilots in airlines around the world have remained the strongest ones. The headstrong pilots often get into a confrontation with the management.

When restriction was lifted on unions in PIA, employees started agitating for revision of service contracts. PALPA also demanded a 35% raise in salaries besides a host of other allowances. The situation reached a point in April 2009 when some pilots were deliberately delaying flights.

From then onwards, Haroon and Baluch were on a collision path. When Haroon pushed for a code-share agreement with Turkish Airlines in 2010, Baluch led the unions against that proposal.

With his intimidating six-foot plus demeanour and heavy voice, he mobilised all the unions behind PALPA. So powerful were those protests in early 2011 that the government succumbed to the pressure, discarded the code-share agreement, and removed Aijaz Haroon, who was a close confidante of President Asif Ali Zardari.

In the following years, Baluch will continue to play an active part in union activity. But in 2014, after losing the PALPA election, he went into relative obscurity. But then when unions started agitating against privatization by the end of 2015, Baluch remerged to take charge.

This time the unions had to face defeat as the steadfast PML-N government refused to budge, despite an incident in which two employees were shot dead. Baluch with a few other leaders is fighting a court battle these days against possible termination.