SpiceJet engineering staff end protest over pay as airline agrees to address demands by next week

The engineering staff of cash-hit SpiceJet Ltd across India have ended their day-long protest after the airline's management assured them that their demands will be addressed by November 8, multiple employees of the airline who were involved in the protest told Moneycontrol.

"The management has asked for a week to resolve our demands and restore our salaries," an employee of the airline told Moneycontrol. 

A section of SpiceJet employees had gone on strike at the Delhi airport on November 2 over issues of reduced salary and its irregular disbursement.

The protests then spread across the country to Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Cochin, Hyderabad, and Pune.

The airline's staff displayed banners having slogans such as "pay our deferred salary", "normalise our salary" and "no pay, no work".

A spokesperson of SpiceJet had said that its operations were not hit as the airline managed operations through available technical staff.

Protesting employees were demanding that their salaries be restored along with their leaves and variable pay benefits, multiple people involved in the protest said.

"Some of us have only been paid a portion of our total salaries since the outbreak of the pandemic," an employee said.

Another staff of the airline added that SpiceJet had not been depositing the provident fund contribution, deducted from their salaries in Employees' Provident Fund Organisation accounts.

Furthermore, staff of the airline were also demanding that their salaries be restored to the pre-pandemic levels.

"Our salaries were cut last year and still have not been restored completely till now, most of us are still getting only 80 percent of our pre-pandemic salaries," another employee said.

SpiceJet in April 2020 had announced that it has cut the salaries of its employees by 10-25 percent by to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and grounding of all airline operations in India.

SpiceJet was forced to announce temporary salary cuts to ensure there would be no layoffs. The airline intended to revert to the pre-COVID salary structure at the earliest, however, for the second wave of COVID-19 that delayed the move.

The salary cuts were rescinded by 50 percent in November 2020, the airline had said.

The airline had also deferred up to 50 percent of the April 2021 salary of its employees as a cash crunch and the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic impacted its operations.

The latest protest come just a month after some employees, who work at the airline's security department, had gone on strike over the same issues.

Last month, SpiceJet officials had said that the salaries of its employees were disbursed on the last day of September which was the practice in pre-COVID days and that the airline has also reverted back to paying salaries in one go instead of paying it in two parts.