Pilots working for the new Tata-owned Air India want the airline to focus on the welfare of its employees and not just look to hike salaries as the airline looks to expand its operations.
"Increasing salaries is not the only concern of pilots at Air India, we need balance and respect from our employers as well," a senior pilot said.
He added that rosters are being ignored and pilots are being harassed by management at Air India at the moment.
The comments from pilots comes after reports said that Air India is expected to announce salary hikes for its employees. Reports said that the planned hikes will benefit employees across the board, including pilots and cabin crew.
The pilot unions of Air India have written multiple letters to the airline's management.
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The Indian Pilots Guild (IPG) and Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) wrote a letter to Air India chief executive officer Campbell Wilson on March 27 and another letter to Air India Chief Human Resources Officer Suresh Dutt Tripathi on March 28.
In their letters, the unions said that all unilateral violations of their rights and service agreements are creating industrial unrest and shattering employee confidence in the current management.
The letters come in the wake of Air India drastically reducing the annual limit of privilege leave accumulation to 60 days from 300 days earlier.
IPG represents the wide-body aircraft pilots at the airline while ICPA represents pilots who operate the narrow-body fleet of Air India.
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"To help the company, the unions have supported you in good faith for over a year. But still, we are being fed the same non-committal, bidding-for-time excuses while rapid and regressive changes are being introduced unilaterally in our service/working conditions through organisational announcements and policies," the two unions stated in a joint letter.
"No change can be made to our existing bilaterally agreed service conditions without issuing a notice u/s—9A of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, and following the procedure specified there under," the letter read.
Tata Group took control of Air India in January last year.
The pilots' unions say all this is happening when they have engaged with the management several times in promoting a positive working environment and ensuring "fair working conditions" for all pilots.
Alleging that the company cherry picked the fluffy and and non-consequential questions during a recent virtual interaction, the letter said, "we are still waiting for answers to all the unanswered questions posted in the chat, as promised by the management during the session.
On March 22, an "organisational announcement was emailed to individual pilots announcing a forcible capping of privilege leave accumulation to 60 days as well as liquidation of any additional leave over and above," the pilots stated in the letter.
Air India in the email communication said it was reviewing the company's leave policy comprehensively to align it with the prevailing market practices.
"As part of that process, privilege leave limit and encashment are being revised," it said.
The pilots' "leave quota, accumulation and encashment cannot be unilaterally" changed by the management in the name of an "organisational announcement" or "Policy" with such nonchalance, the unions said.
According to the letter, the pilots have appealed to the airline management on ethical grounds to follow the letter and spirit of the law and engage unions actively as is being done in other Tata companies but to no avail.
(With inputs from PTI)
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