The talks between senior pilots of erstwhile Indian Airlines and a sub-committee of the Air India Board on incentives and allowances have failed to yield any result with the employees threatening "industrial action" if the issues are not resolved soon.
"We had a talk with the management. We have asked them to pay our dues of flying allowances and productivity-linked incentives (PLI) of three months. If they fail, we will be forced to go for some industrial action," Captain V K Bhalla, who led a five-day long pilots' stir recently, told PTI.
The pilots representatives, led by Bhalla met the Board sub-committee on Tuesday in Mumbai, had asked the management to phase out expatriate pilots who were being paid "higher" than their Indian counterparts and have been "kept out" of the air-carrier's cost-cutting plan.
An expat commander of a Boeing 777 aircraft gets a salary of $12,700 and a bonus of minimum $12,000, which comes to around Rs 12 lakh. The minimum salary an expat pilot withdraws is around Rs 6 lakh compared with about Rs 3 lakh for their Indian counterpart, sources in the pilots' unions said.
"The management is giving us a step-motherly treatment. If they don't have money then why are they paying salaries to expat pilots regularly," Bhalla said, adding that "cash crunch" was only for the Indian pilots who were getting three-times lower salary than the expats.
The Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA), the non-executive pilots' body of erstwhile Indian Airlines, on Wednesday said that it will not accept any pay cut proposed by the management.
In a letter sent to the airline's management, ICPA has set November 1 as the deadline for the payment of two months' dues, failing which the pilots have threatened to 'take action'.
ICPA general secretary R S Otal said in the letter: "Our patience has run out and we are ready to go for any action."
Last month, Air India pilots had resorted to mass sick leave for five days bringing the airline's operations to a grinding halt over the proposed 50 per cent cut in their productivity-linked incentives.
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