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November 5, 2009 | Air India pilots threaten to go on strike once again | Chennai: Pilots of national carrier Air India on Thursday threatened to go on strike again if their flying allowances and other salary arrears of the past two months
are not been paid to them by November 10. The pilots threatened to go on strike
from November 24 in that case. The decision was taken at the Indian Commercial
Pilots Associations (ICPA) central committee meeting at the Air India house (complex)
in southern Chennai on Thursday. The ICPA, a union formed by 800 erstwhile Indian
Airlines pilots, had sent a 14-day strike notice to the Air India management on
Monday (November 02). The irked pilots say that foreign pilots employed by the
airline are being paid more than them. "Our demand is that our salaries... that
is flying allowances is a major part of the salaries has not been paid for two
months and the foreign pilots who are employed by the company are being paid approximately
30 percent more than what we are being paid and apart from other allowances and
perks, they are also being paid on time.," said Captain Sabu, secretary of ICPA.
Trashing reports that the airline is incurring losses due to recession, Sabu said
that despite Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's assurance, the Air India management
has not paid any heed to their grievances. "The entire airline as whole is suffering
now and the Honourable Prime Minister had promised in his Independence Day address
that he would not allow Air India to die away. But we do not see the management
following it up. "The management is not taking even a single step in the right
direction. We have given them a number of suggestions on how to revive this airline
and to improve our finances but they do not seem to be interested in that." "They
are only talking about pay cut from all the employees. No, recession has got absolutely
nothing to do with this because we still see that our planes are going full, most
of our flights are going full. There are passengers travelling," he added. The
airline declared a loss of billion dollars in the financial year March 2009, while
in September, around 400 Air India executive pilots went on mass sick leave for
four days to protest pay cuts, resulting in more than 200 flights being cancelled
and the airline losing more than rupees 100 crore (one billion rupees). |
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