The Hindu Business Line : Air India may reassess manpower position

‘The airline is not looking at retrenching staff. At present there are several departments where there is surplus manpower while in others there is scarcity’

Ashwini Phadnis

New Delhi, Aug. 7 Air India is planning to carry out a total assessment of its manpower situation with a view to identifying the actual requirements and prune staff costs. The assessment will include outsourced manpower in India and abroad.

This is among the various cost-control measures that the airline is looking to implement to reduce costs and work on a turnaround strategy for Air India. The airline will also review contractual employment after superannuation and look at the option of returning leased aircraft so as to make better use of owned capacity in the fleet.

Other cost-cutting steps include doing away with festival advances, subsidised loans and advances and reimbursement towards educational scholarship merit awards immediately.

Leave encashment

In addition, encashment of leave for all categories of employees will be stopped with immediate effect. This order shall, however, not apply to people who are due for retirement.

The airline crew, which is also doing flying duty, will be allowed to encash leave that will lapse.

From the beginning of the month, Air India has also decided to withdraw reimbursement of electricity charges at the residence of all categories of executives

“The airline is not looking at retrenching staff. At present there are several departments where there is surplus manpower while in others there is scarcity. We are looking at a wide array of areas for saving costs and no assessment has yet been made on how much monies the airline will save,” a senior airline officer said.

Employees on contract

In an internal circular, the Chairman and Managing Director, Mr Raghu Menon, has asked all Department Heads to review the position on contractual employment in their department and submit a report within a week.

A justification detailing particulars relating to the remuneration for a person being taken on contract post-retirement, listing out a consolidated sum to be paid, needs to be drawn up before making a case for employing the person.

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