Negotiations over unpaid salaries between an Air India pilots' union and the airline’s management in Mumbai on Wednesday have failed.
This could affect international flights as these pilots were earlier with Air India, when international and domestic flights operated separately. The domestic unit earlier flew under the Indian Airlines brand.
Representatives from eight other unions are scheduled to meet with the aviation secretary and Air India management in New Delhi on Thursday.
The group of eight unions says that employees have not been paid for four months and on Wednesday wrote to the Prime Minister seeking his “urgent intervention” in releasing salaries to employees, failing which they will strike work beginning April 2.
The strike will likely affect Air India's international flights.
“We … appeal to you for your kind and urgent intervention to resolve the situation and appeal to you for justice,” the Joint Forum of Guilds/Unions/Associations of Air India said in a letter sent to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday.
The Forum includes the Indian Pilots Guild, Air India Aircraft Engineers Association, Air India Engineers Association, All India Service Engineers Association, Air India Employees Union, Air Corporation Employees Union, Air India Officers Union and Air India Cabin Crew Association, representing almost all classes of Air India’s 33,000 employees.
A majority of employees have expressed their inability to work from April 2 due to non-payment of salaries over several months, the Forum claimed.
“Due to non-payment of wages for an extended time period, the employees are unable to meet their financial commitments and family responsibilities,” the letter said, pointing out that a significant number of them came from “humble background and modest means”.
The letter also pointedly said that “unlike Air India, which can turn to the central government for funds, employees have no such option”.
“The respective employees and their families alone have to suffer the humiliation of loan defaults and ensuing stress,” it added.
Noting that employees have been working and enduring hardship for the past year, the letter claimed that they are “no longer able to bear this agony, which has been thrust upon them for no fault of theirs”.
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