Big crisis in front of airlines regarding salary hike, employees are on leave on the pretext of illness

After the Corona epidemic, a new crisis has arisen in front of the airlines of India. The news is that the dissatisfaction of the employees in the airlines about the salary hike is increasing. On the one hand, airlines are hoping to return to 'achche din' after the commencement of flight services after the Corona epidemic, while there is discontent among the employees of these companies due to non-increase in salary for two years. Alam is that employees of many airlines have gone on leave on the pretext of illness. Most of the employees on leave are technicians from IndiGo and GoFirst.

Employees trying to leave their company and move to another

However, despite the staff crunch, IndiGo and GoFirst have been able to keep their flights running smoothly, barring a few incidents. Another major reason for the shortage of staff in these airlines is the recruitment drive by Akash Air, the reorganized Jet Airways and Tata-owned Air India. On July 2, about 55 per cent of IndiGo's domestic flights were delayed as a large number of its crew had gone on leave.

Employees who went looking for jobs on sick leave

Sources say that these employees had allegedly gone on sick leave to participate in the recruitment activities going on in Air India. On July 13, some SpiceJet pilots sent a message that the airline's captain and 'first officer' were going on sick leave to protest their low pay. However, the airline said that all the pilots had come to work that day. During the peak of the pandemic, Indian airline companies cut the salaries of their employees. Most are still paying low wages to their employees and have not started paying them 'full' wages.

Companies paying very low salaries to newcomers

A senior executive of an affordable airline company said that employees are aware that the workload on them at this time is similar to the time before the pandemic, but they are being paid less. Also, their condition is worse due to inflation. He said that this has created dissatisfaction among the employees. There is a lot of resentment, especially among the technicians working in the lower positions. Two technical workers, who participated in the protest, said that the newcomers in the low-cost airline are being paid only Rs 8,000 to 15,000 salary, which is very low.

The condition of the employees in the aviation sector has deteriorated since 2004.

Although the issue of low wages is still rising, the protests show that this situation has been there in the aviation industry for a long time. There were two occasions in September and November last year when SpiceJet employees went on strike at the Delhi airport to protest low wages. Most of these employees were associated with the security department and aircraft maintenance. In a December 2020 report by aviation consultancy company CAPA (CAPA) India, it was said that human resource management in the Indian aviation sector is the latter's focus and this situation is from 2003-04. It was said in the report that hundreds of aircraft are procured and inducted, but it is not taken into account that skilled manpower is needed to operate them.