Employees of Air India's technical arm AIESL launch nationwide protest against salary cut
Jul 19, 2021
By Ashoke Raj
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], July 20 : There has been a huge resentment among Aircraft Maintenance Engineers/Service Engineers of AI Engineering Services Limited (AIESL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Air India limited, over recent salary cuts exclusively for the engineers while the rest of the staff of Air India and other subsidiaries have been spared of this additional salary cut.
This salary cut of 20 per cent on gross salary has been implemented as AIESL has failed to timely deposit statutory dues of provident fund and income tax.
Though these statutory dues have already been deposited by each and every employee from their salaries every month and this is a clear case of diversion of funds. And now again, the AIESL is cutting 20 per cent of gross salaries from the AIESL employees in order to deposit these funds.
Engineers are already undergoing a 40 per cent cut in allowances since April 2020 which leads to a 25 per cent cut in their gross salaries and now again 20 per cent cut is implemented which leads to an almost 45 per cent cut in their gross salaries.
As per reports, hundreds of employees have filed a police complaint in police station, Parliament street and EOW against Director Finance, V Hejmadi and Chief of Finance, Kapil Aseri for fraud and breach of trust.
Aircraft Maintenance Engineers (AMEs) all over India are very much agitated and protests are going across the country for the last couple of days in AIESL.
On Monday, there was a huge protest in Mumbai, where CEO, AIESL came to address hundreds of employees in the open.
Similarly, other protests were held in various cities like Bengaluru, Delhi and Kolkata, where AMEs wore black badges and shouted slogans of "Workers Unity Zindabad".
The demands of AMEs 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.
AIESL AMEs have threatened that protests will continue till all their demands are met.
