Section Of AIESL's Permanent Engineers Plans To Go On Strike On 24 May

A section of permanent engineers of state-owned Air India Engineering Services (AIESL) on Monday threatened to go on strike from 24 May, seeking immediate implementation of their long-pending revised salary payments. The forum represents around 1,700 staff at the company that provides engineering services mainly to Air India as well as a few other airlines.

According to a notice, the forum has proposed to go on "strike/any type of agitation from/on 24 May, 2024".

The move comes less than three weeks after it warned of possible "industrial unrest" among its members if the salary issues were not addressed immediately.

The forum represents aircraft maintenance engineers, service engineers and allied cadre unions of permanent employees of erstwhile Air India and Indian Airlines, who were transferred to AIESL. The company has more than 5,000 staff.

The Aviation Industry Employees' Guild, All India Service Engineers' Association, Air Corporation Employees' Union and Indian Aircraft Technicians' Associations inked a wage revision agreement in January this year.

As per the forum, the agreement was signed after more than 15 years with the aim of ending several litigations, discrimination of pay implementation and services conditions, among other issues.

While noting that the agreement is yet to be implemented, it also cited the company's recent commitment to provide arrears to contractual employees.

"This is blatant discrimination against the permanent employees who are deprived of their legitimate claim for wage revision since long," the forum said and claimed that it is also an unfair labour practice.

The notice is addressed to AIESL chief.

Last month, the union representing the company's Fixed Term Employment (FTE) staff had called for a strike on 23 April and the same was withdrawn later after reaching a settlement regarding their grievances, including on salary revision and promotion.

AIESL provides base and line maintenance as well as overhaul of landing gear, avionics accessories and components, among others. It is under the AI Assets Holding after the disinvestment of Air India in 2022.