SpiceJet’s engineering staff are protesting at nine airports across the country — Delhi, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Cochin, Hyderabad, Patna and Pune — against salary cuts and irregular payment of salaries. The staff members are demanding that their salaries be restored along with their leaves, now that normalcy is returning. They also want the appraisals to happen.
On November 1, most of the employees working at the aircraft maintenance department, gathered outside Terminal 3 of the Delhi airport, to protest holding up banners demanding their deferred salaries and normalisation of pay.
The employees claim they are receiving only 60 per cent of their pay. According to them, they are receiving hourly wages and have been deprived of their weekly offs too. However, last month, the chairman and managing director had said that all salary-related issues had been resolved and full salaries were being paid regularly now.
Most airlines across the globe had been adversely impacted by the pandemic and resultant travel restrictions. SpiceJet alone incurred a net loss of well over Rs 900 crore each in 2019-20 and 2020-21, respectively. For the quarter ending June 2021, it had posted a net loss of Rs 729 crore due to the second wave of the pandemic.
If the protest continues, operations may be affected.
The security personnel of the Airline at Delhi airport had also gone on strike recently over salary-related problems. However, post discussions with the management, they had resumed normal work.
