Air India's engineers launch nationwide protest against 45% salary cut

V Hejmadi and Chief of Finance, Kapil Aseri for fraud and breach of trust. The workers' demands include immediate restoration of full salaries (20 per cent on gross as well as 40 per cent on allowances) and an immediate sacking of the Chief of Finance.

The employees of Aircraft Maintenance Engineers/Service Engineers of AI Engineering Services Limited (AIESL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Air India limited, have launched a nationwide protest over the salary cut of engineers, news wire ANI reported.

According to the report, the recent salary cut is exclusively for the engineers while the rest of the staff has been spared. The recent 20 percent cut on gross salary is on account of failure by the company to timely deposit the statutory dues like provident fund and income tax.

These dues were deposited by all the employees every month but the company failed to pay them on time. Earlier a 25 percent cut on gross salaries was already made taking the total cut to 45 percent.

A protest was carried out on July 19 in Mumbai where the CEO of the company addressed the employees. Such protests were also held in Bengaluru, Delhi and Kolkata, where these Aircraft Maintenance Engineers (AMEs) wore black badges and shouted slogans of "Workers Unity Zindabad".

The report added the engineers have also filed complaints with the police against Director Finance, V Hejmadi and Chief of Finance, Kapil Aseri for fraud and breach of trust.

The workers' demands include immediate restoration of full salaries (20 percent on gross as well as 40 per cent on allowances) and an immediate sacking of the Chief of Finance.