New Delhi: Unhappy with the new wage structure announced by Air India, the airline’s pilots have warned of “industrial unrest” if coerced to sign the “draconian” terms.
Air India had Monday informed the staff through internal communication, which ThePrint has seen, about the revision in the compensation of flying staff with effect from April 2023.
In a joint letter, dated 19 April, the Indian Commercial Pilots Association and Indian Pilots Guild said, “…terms and conditions are not acceptable to us, and we will contest this travesty using any and all avenues available to us. Our member pilots will not sign these unilateral revised terms of employment and compensation.” ThePrint has a copy of this letter.
In their letter to Suresh Dutt Tripathi, Chief Human Resources Officer at Air India, they said: “Any coercive steps or victimisation by the company against our member pilots to sign these draconian terms and compensation will lead to industrial unrest.”
“…any change in service conditions of Air India (Tata-Talace) shall have to be done within the framework of industrial law… The action of unilaterally changing service conditions and thrusting new terms and conditions at our membership is wholly illegal, unethical and in breach of your own share purchase agreement, just as illegal as the unilateral alteration of the conditions governing leave and leave encashment,” the letter added.
Talace is the Tata subsidiary through which bids were placed for Air India.
However, an Air India spokesperson told ThePrint through an e-mailed statement Wednesday that the airline will continue to engage with the staff through this (organisational) process “as currently there is no recognised union in Air India” and a large number of employees have already signed the new contracts.
“The new compensation structure for pilots and cabin crew is our endeavour to bring in parity among different groups, encourage productivity and boost emoluments drawn by them,” the statement said.
“The managerial and supervisory role played by the experienced pilots is also being recognised in the form of designating them as senior commander and also offering them a special monthly allowance,” it added.
The spokesperson added that the contracts reflecting these enhancements were individually sent to pilots and cabin crew for necessary paperwork.
One major bone of contention is that the new wage structure seeks to provide a fixed salary for 40 hours of flying instead of the 70 hours earlier.
“The actual guaranteed money being offered is only for 40 hrs. Effectively, any time a pilot is on leave or is unavailable due to recurrent training requirements or document/licence renewals, not to mention any sick leave, there is an automatic pay cut involved. The so-called rationalisation of allowances is not in line with any industry practices as projected by HR,” the unions said in their letter.
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What pilots resent
In their letter, the pilots’ associations stated that the “virtual Townhall (held to announce the changes to the employees) was a sham full of one-way communication replete with buzzwords and characteristically devoid of any meaningful detail or even straightforward answers to any of the hard hitting & pertinent questions that were posted in the virtual chat”.
They also alleged that the airline wants to completely absolve itself of the responsibility of providing pilots with a stable roster around which they can plan their lives. “As per company ‘requirement’ and in the name of ‘business exigency’, pilots are now expected to be on call 24×7, effectively on a perpetual standby,” they said, adding, “any family/social commitments or semblance of a work/life balance that pilots may want is now irrelevant and subject to the whims & fancies of company scheduling.”
“We are already under a lot of stress due to decades of mismanaged scheduling with an unstable roster with daily/hourly changes and systemic denial of leave, the company now wants to make that the new norm?,” they asked.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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