Air India pilot unions seeks cost-cutting measures in private airlines

In a joint letter to Air India Chairman and Managing Director, Rajiv Bansal, the Indian Pilots Guild (IPG) and Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) urged the airline chief Rajiv Bansal to follow private airlines on cost-cutting measures and said that the employee strength should be brought at par with other market players through measures like compulsory leave without pay.

New Delhi: Air India pilot unions on Monday urged the airline chief Rajiv Bansal to follow private airlines on cost-cutting measures and said that the employee strength should be brought at par with other market players through measures like compulsory leave without pay.

In a joint letter to Air India Chairman and Managing Director, Rajiv Bansal, the Indian Pilots Guild (IPG) and Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) said, "...We understand that a leading private carrier has an employee strength of 250 infinite and 130 in HR handling a fleet of 255 aircrafts this may be contacted with Air India which has more than 1600 employees in HR and Finance for 125 aircraft."

The letter further read that this is nowhere in-line with market standards and since operations have been scaled back, their workload has reduced drastically. It is prudent for Air India and the MoCA to take cognizance of this excess manpower to trim costs as our aircraft stand under-utilized.

"Since Air India is in financial distress on account of the pandemic the employee strength should be brought at par with other market players through common-sense measures like "Compulsory leave without pay" till such time normal operations resume," the letter stated.

Supporting their statement, the pilots union also said that presently, the management has resorted to an across the board 10% cut on allowances. While prima facie appearing to be fair, this scheme distributes the financial burden across the various categories of employees in an extremely discriminatory manner amounting to treating unequal people equally.

"....the Class IV employees, who are at the bottom of the organisation ladder, are more severely affected by such a salary cut than the employees at higher grades," the letter said.

The pilots union proposed that Class IV employees should be exempt from such a wage cut and their liability can be borne by other employees who are earning higher salaries.