Thaindian News

Mumbai, June 25 (IANS) Air India’s top management Thursday discussed with union representatives here a proposal to cut salaries of its 31,000 employees, but no decision has been taken, a union leader said.
Arvind Jadhav, chairman and managing director (CMD) of the cash-strapped national carrier, was present at the meeting.

However, union leaders said they had not accepted the proposal and would meet Jadhav again Friday to discuss the issue.

“We have an agreement where our salaries cannot be cut. We are meeting our CMD tomorrow (Friday) again. We will suggest other cost-cutting measures in the meeting,” said J.B. Kadian, general secretary of the Air Corp Employees’ Union (ACEU).

Meanwhile, Air India is working on setting up committees that would assess the reasons for the current financial problems of the airline, officials said.

Earlier, the management had announced that it would delay the June salaries of its employees by 15 days.

On Wednesday, Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and discussed with him a bailout plan for the airline.

The prime minister suggested him to adopt various cost-cutting measures to improve the financial condition of the National Aviation Company India Ltd (NACIL), which owns Air India.

After the meeting, Patel said the government would support the loss-making carrier, but stopped short of spelling out the size and nature of the package.

Air India, which incurred a loss of Rs.4,000 crore last fiscal, plans to ask for a Rs.10,000-crore (about $2 billion) bailout package from the central government.

Air India chairman Jadhav, Civil Aviation Secretary M. Madhavan Nambiar and other senior ministry and airline officials had met the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, T.K.A. Nair, Monday to discuss the issue.