Failure to reinstate salaries after two years of drastic cuts has had the Indian airline industry facing one of its largest industrial relation crises.
While employees of Air India under its government ownership had organised a strike in 2011, it is for the first time private airlines are facing stress in relations with their workers, threatening mass leave and disrupting business.
The latest among them are the technicians of IndiGo and Go First, who have been reporting sick in large numbers at principle bases like Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad, forcing the airlines to ferry staff from other locations to keep operations ongoing.
In the first week of July, IndiGo found it hard to operate even 50 per cent of its flights on time, as cabin crew reported sick at the last moment. Sources said that SpiceJet pilots are planning a similar action to demand their pre-Covid salary.
Most of these companies legally disallow formation of employee unions and hence the staff are resorting to unique measures like planning last-minute sick leave on social media messaging groups and posting on social media platforms under anonymous names.
The threat is real as airlines terminate employees if they are found to organise workers for protest or mass leaves.
In April, IndiGo suspended five pilots in what was the first case of action against organised labour protest the airline witnessed in its inception. On Tuesday it issued termination letters to two technicians while Go First warned that if the striking technicians don't join work within 24 hours they will be fired.
“IndiGo and Go First are compromising on passenger safety by paying less to their technicians. When will national media speak up,” posted a Twitter account named Squak 420.
The aviation regulator DGCA has been forced to interfere as claims of safety being hampered due to unhappy employees rise.
“We are regularly deploying squads to do spot checks at major airports to ensure that all airlines have the requisite number of employees for a safe operation. As of now, things are under control,” DGCA head Arun Kumar said.
As the impact of Covid wanes and the industry returns to a boom from two years of bust, employees are demanding that management reinstate their pre-covid salary which the airlines deducted during the last two years.
Employees say that their intention is not to lead to inconvenience for passengers, but they are left with no choice after repeatedly requesting the management to increase their salaries. A high inflationary environment has only increased their woes--India’s retail inflation touched an eight-year high of 7.79 per cent in April.
The dissatisfaction among employees cuts across rank and file, starting from the pilot down to the technician.
Ramesh Bomkanti (name changed), an aircraft technician working in IndiGo’s Hyderabad set-up got hired as a trainee in 2018 at Rs 8,000 per month. After spending a year in probation, he became a junior technician with a take-home salary of Rs 17,500 per month.
When Covid grounded the airline business in 2020, IndiGo reduced his monthly pay to Rs 12,000 and then increased it to Rs 15,000 in January. “We are recognised as skilled labour under the definition of the Labour Ministry, but here we are getting paid lower than unskilled labourers. All we are asking the management is a pay package that can sustain us,” Bomkanti said.
Similarly, despite partial restoration of salaries, pilots across airlines remain disgruntled, throwing challenges for managers. Market leader IndiGo is currently operating more than 1,550 flights per day which is higher than what it operated before Covid grounded travel.
“Airlines are back to operating capacity of pre-Covid level, our duty hours have significantly increased and in some cases (the work environment has become) more hectic than what it was before Covid. So why not restore full salary,” a senior commander said, pointing out that airlines have restored full pay of staff at other departments.
Airline executives said they can’t give too much away because they face a dual headwind of record high fuel price and currency exchange rate which is slowing down the recovery.
The Wadia group-owned Go First said that a few of its employees who were absent from duty were misguided, and have assured the airline that they would resume duty "from today or tomorrow".
“As business recovers, we are in the process of addressing some of the issues related to employee remuneration. This is an ongoing activity and we will continue to take employee feedback in the process,” an IndiGo spokesperson said.
An analysis by ICICI Securities said that record high jet fuel price which has soared by 120 per cent since July 2021 and record depreciation in the value of rupee will lead to over Rs 700 crore loss for IndiGo in the first quarter of the ongoing fiscal.