Air India staff to get basic on July 31, incentives delayed

The Air India management has issued a circular to employees saying that while their basic salaries for July will be paid on July 31, the productivity-linked incentives for all employees will be postponed till August 20. In fact, CNBC-TV18’s Swati Khandelwal reports that the PLI norms will be reviewed for the company.

Here is a verbatim transcript of Swati Khandelwal’s comments on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

What we pick up from sources is that Air India has indeed issued a circular to its employees saying that they will pay the basic salary on time ie. by July 31. But the PLI would be delayed. In fact, that has been reviewed and the company is expected to make the PLI statements by August 20.

We do understand that the company has set up a four-member committee, which is looking at the PLI parameter to be reviewed. Also, the reason that they are looking at reviewing is that there is a huge disparity in Air India and Indian Airline’s staff for the merger and it continues even after the merger. So while a section of employees are paid higher PLI for the same job that they are doing for Air India, a section of other employees do not get the same amount, which needs to be cleared.

Just to give a sense of the overall wage bill for the company for employees, the PLI stands for almost half of the entire wages which is about Rs 1,500 crore as it stands. For some specific works like pilots, engineers and cabin crew, the PLI is almost three to four times the salary of the employees. So clearly there needs to be some reviewing that is coming in from there.