Air India employees have withdrawn their threat to go on “no pay, no work” strike after the airline on Friday assured them of clearing all pay dues by June end.
“We have given them a payment schedule under which we would clear all dues by June,” Chairman and Managing Director Rohit Nandan said. He said the strike had been called off.
Eight major unions of the airline, representing pilots, engineers and cabin crew, had called for a strike from Monday to protest against the delay in payment of salaries, productivity-linked incentive and other allowances pending for three months.
The union leaders and the management had held a day-long meeting yesterday, but the talks failed. Both sides had decided to meet again on Friday.
A union representative, who attended on Friday's meeting, said, “The management has promised that our payments would be made through internal generation. It is possible for the airline since its revenue has increased substantially.” He said the productivity-linked incentives would be paid on the 15th of every month.
“In the meantime, if the airline gets equity infusion from the government, all the payments will be made,” he said.
Air India, which is reeling under losses of Rs 20,000 crore and has debt on its books of over Rs 43,000 crore, is set to get Rs 4,000 crore as equity infusion from the government.
With the gap between demand and supply widening in the domestic market, the airline is also registering increase in revenues.
The unions had earlier sought the prime minister's intervention to resolve the crisis, failing which they had threatened to go on agitation from Tuesday.
