New Delhi: Trade unions of national carrier Air India have termed the airline’s new ‘leave without pay’ scheme as akin to illegal lay-off.
Accordingly, the Joint Action Forum of Air India Unions strongly opposed the new scheme in a letter to Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri.
“We are indeed shocked that the management of Air India could prepare and formulate a scheme for compulsorily sending workers on leave without pay, which is akin to an illegal lay-off under the garb of leave without pay, when ironically the redundancy actually lies in the upper echelons of the management and not with the humble workers of Air India, who have slogged to make the airline the treasure it is,” the letter said.
“It must be noted that out of the 11,000 permanent employees, our management occupies almost 25 per cent as ‘Executive Cadre’, with little or no accountability. Solely among the ‘Elite Management Cadre’, we have 121 top officers ranking from DGMS, GMs, EDs to Functional Directors, most of whom are either performing duplicate job functions or are indeed redundant, and not to mention the retired relics serving as consultants and also the CEOs of various subsidiary companies,” it added.
Last week, the airline cited challenging financial situation for implementing the LWP scheme.
Meanwhile, Air India has gone in for a massive cut in employee allowances even as protests from all sections of the employees continue.
This is an across the board cut in allowances for all employees, rather than just the pilots and the other flying staff.
The salary and allowances (such as lDA, HRA and other allowances linked to basic pay) will remain unchanged.
