Pay salaries now or we protest: Air India pilots

 New Delhi: A section of Air India pilots today warned of an agitation to press their demand for immediate payment of salary and incentives, pending for the last few months, and issues pertaining to their career progression. However, a decision on whether they would go on a strike or adopt a different mode of agitation would be taken only once the Indian Pilots Guild (IPG) members complete voting on the ballot at their general body meeting in Mumbai by this evening, IPG sources said. The IPG represents about 300 pilots of the pre-merger Air India, while about 1400 pilots of the erstwhile Indian Airlines owe allegiance to the Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA), who are also protesting on same issues. However, the ICPA would not be joining their IPG colleagues in their protest action, at least at this stage, the sources said. [caption id=“attachment_118386” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Air India employees have not been paid for almost four months. Reuters”]  [/caption] Besides the delay in payment of PLI (productivity-linked incentives), the IPG sources said the Air India management was deciding on issues relating to their career progression and promotions which was under the jurisdiction of the Justice Dharmadhikari Committee that is going into the entire gamut of HR issues relating to the merger of the two state-run carriers. The sources said by taking decisions “relating to our career progression, the management is pre-empting the outcome of the Dharmadhikari panel which is yet to submit its report.” The issues on which IPG is protesting also include training of pilots for the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner, whose induction in Air India is likely  to start by the end of this year. ICPA sources said they had nothing to do with the IPG’s career progression issue but were also concerned about delayed payment of incentives and allowances. IPCA had earlier this week shot off a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seeking his intervention to expedite the payment of PLI. Wishing the Prime Minister a Happy Diwali, ICPA General Secretary Rishabh Kapur had then said, “Sadly with two days to Diwali, ‘The Festival of Lights’, there still continues to be darkness in the lives of Air India employees with 80 percent of our salary due in the form of PLI and allowances” not being paid for almost four months. Maintaining that Air India had suffered only due to “mismanagement” in the past, he had said, “We would like to put on record that the failures of the airline cannot be attributed to the employees at all”. However, Kapur had said the situation “seems to be improving now with the new Air India CMD (Rohit Nandan) in charge”. PTI