I don’t have to run rudderless: AI chief

“Now,I don’t have to run rudderless. A clear roadmap is available to me. Objectives have to be set by me,” said Jadhav in his first interview to The Indian Express after the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved a Rs 1,200 crore bailout and wage cut proposal.

Wisened from a previous attempt to cut wages that backfired in 2009,Jadhav said that the carrier will submit financial implications of wage rationalisation to the government soon. “What we basically want to do is to keep the government at the highest level in the picture,so that if something happens,everybody is on the same side of the story,” he said.

In 2009,the Prime Minister’s intervention had forced the Air India management and civil aviation ministry to reverse its plan to lockdown the airline after some pilots went on a five-day strike protesting a wage cut order.

The airline board is set to meet on January 19 to take forward the cabinet decision. The airline’s progress on wage rationsalisation will be closely monitored by finance and civil aviation ministries,besides the labour ministry as “some industrial issues might be involved”.

Negotiating wage agreements with representatives of 14 unions will not be easy,admitted Jadhav. “Definitely it is going to be touchy. We have to sit down and negotiate and get the process rolling. We have certain points on our hand,but we have not put it in black and white so far because we didn’t want to upset the apple cart,” he said.

One of the pre-conditions for government support was trimming the annual wage bill of over Rs 3,000 crore for around 32,000 employees by at least Rs 400 crore. Air India is now looking at a three-pronged strategy to rationalise wages across all sections of employees.

“There are three issues very clearly on that. Issue number one is getting commitment to the turnaround plan which will involve efficiency. Second is productivity and third is rationalisation of working hours across all sections,” said Jadhav.

Despite the merger in 2007,the company continues to follow separate policies for employees of erstwhile Indian Airlines and Air India. The troubled national carrier,which had piled up losses to the extent of Rs 7,200 crore and high-cost debts to tide over immediate cash requirements,has been under a government panel’s scrutiny for a turnaround. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs’s (CCEA) “green signal” has armed the carrier now to take some difficult decisions.