New Delhi: Popular nursery rhymes are becoming the new narrative in the war of words between Air India’s pilots and the management.
Air India pilots have taken to Twitter to launch an offensive against the management, saying that pilots’ salaries are reduced by 60 per cent but for management executives, the cut is only 7.5 per cent. Pilots are protesting the drastic difference in the pay cuts of management and pilots and used a nursery rhyme to take the message across to the social media platform.
In a tweet, the Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) said: “JohnyJohny, Yes Papa
Taken salary cut? Yes Papa Show your payslip, Hahaha! 60% cut to #frontlineworkers 7.5 per cent to mngmt? Is it justified?”
Attached to the tweet is a salary break up of management executives, which contends that they have taken only a paltry 7.5 per cent cut on their salary in the form of telephone allowances, fuel allowances and other allowances while their salary remains intact.
Pilots have been making the point that the management has not reduced its salaries while pilots are being asked to take exorbitant pay cuts.
Air India pilots have told the management that while austerity measures are heaped on pilots, senior officials and management are enjoying lavish perks like free club memberships, scores of leased cars and hundreds of litres of free fuel every month and there has been no cutback.
In a letter to Air India Chairman and Managing Director Rajiv Bansal, the pilots associations said: “It is not only unprincipled for the senior officials to exclude their perks, eligibilities and entitlements from the austerity measures but also irrefutable proof that the intent of the management’s cost-cutting measures is to further the agenda of abusing employees under the guise of this epidemic.”
The pilots said that the factors of redundancy and efficiency, as per the compulsory leave without pay scheme, should first apply to the officials of the senior management from 2016, who are directly responsible for the “bungled” decision-making that has seen Air India losses mount year after year, from Rs 48,000 crore in 2017 to Rs
70,000 crore.
The 50 per cent cut for senior AI officials is only on “Other Allowances”. This equates to an approximate 10 per cent pay cut on the gross salary for the Director Personnel, who is also a Functional Director. “This is a deliberate whitewash to shield top management from any significant pay reduction,” the pilots alleged.
