Air India tells seniors to forgo July salary

Air India tells seniors to forgo July salary

Air India CMD Arvind Jadhav asked all senior employees, on deputation and contract, to help the airline 'save every single paisa'

Naveeta Singh. Mumbai



Struggling national carrier Air India on Friday told its top management to forgo their salary and productivity-linked incentives for July to help the cash-strapped airline battle the financial crunch.
Air India CMD Arvind Jadhav asked all senior employees of Air India, its subsidiaries and those on deputation and contract to help the airline "save every single paisa".
The move comes a week after airlines' junior-level employees were told their salaries will be delayed, prompting an immediate strike by 31,000 employees. Air India has more than 153 senior executive staff. Employees of National Aviation Company Limited organised a lunch-hour protest across India over the move. "The crisis did not happen in a year. It is the result of several years of mismanagement in Air India," Dinkar Shetty, president of Air Corporation Employee Union (ACEU), told DNA.
Shetty wants the airline to ensure that the staff gets their salaries by July 15. "We want them to say that in writing," he said.
Shetty said the employees would not mind going the British Airways way where employees were offered shares instead of pay.
"We are going to have a meeting with the management on Saturday to decide the future course of action. We are ready to work for additional hours to pull our airline out of red. But they should tell us how they incurred these losses and also let us know of the plan to come out of it," said Shetty.
Air India's losses for the last financial year are estimated at around Rs4,000 crore. The national carrier, according to some reports, was planning to seek Rs5,000 crore as additional equity, Rs7,000 crore as a soft loan payable after five years at a five per cent interest rate, and a grant of Rs2,000 crore.
Industry sources say the situation could have been avoided had Air India delayed the ongoing deliveries of aircraft, like its competitors Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines did. Air India had recently placed orders for 111 new planes worth over Rs45,000 crore.