NEW DELHI: Air India
staff should get prepared to forego their Productivity Linked Incentive (PLI)
very soon, Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh said at a meeting with the AI
unions on Monday.
The meeting with the unions was
perhaps called with this one agenda to impress upon the AI workforce that until
the national carrier starts making profit, there will be no PLIs and that the
unions should not resort to agitations in resistance. Singh also discussed the
turnaround plan and the implementation of the Dharmadikari report with the 22
representatives who met him on Monday.
While promising promotions that had
been frozen for sometime now, Singh sought the unity of the employees taking
the example of Japan Airlines that had made losses of `120,000 crore in 2010
and yet made profit of `12,000 crore in 2011.
“The minister basically wanted to
tell the unions that they were formed for a grievance redressal system and
should not resort to methods of agitation to fulfil their demands. He also
sought their cooperation in accepting that there will be no PLIs once the D
report is implemented,” ministry official said.
The current union of pilots which is
on strike was neither invited nor represented at this meeting. Even the
erstwhile pilots of Indian Airlines who were represented under the Indian
Commercial Pilots Association union apparently didn’t disagree with the PLI
proposal. Air India spends almost `2,000 crore every year in PLIs.
The minister also stated that none of
the employees will be sacked. “The merged entities had 34,000 people initially.
Today just because of attrition the workforce is 27,000. We are counting on
this attrition to save our wage bills, without sacking anyone,” the AI official
said.
Arun Kumar, General Secretary of the
Air Corporation Employees Union (ACEU) told media that their proposal was to
merge the PLI with their basic pay and give a neutralised salary. “PLI is
linked to profits. When the PLI agreement was signed in 1999, the erstwhile
Indian Airlines was breaking-even by selling 19,000 seats per day. Today the
two merged entities selling 40,000 seats/day is also not achieving this. So how
can there be a PLI,” he said.
ACEU forms 80% of the workforce at
the ground staff and cabin crew level. Their PLI is mostly 60-70% of the basic
pay, hence the dependence on the PLI component is not huge. It’s the senior
categories that draw almost 900% in PLIs that will take the beating in this
move. “A DGM level officer, for example, draws a basic pay of `50,000 but gets
PLI of `1.5-2lakh. It does not make sense,”Arun said.
Meanwhile, the situation on the Air India pilots’ strike remained
stagnant.
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