The unrest over salaries in the aviation industry has spread to Go First, where nearly 70 cabin crew across the airline’s network went on mass sick leave on Monday to protest salary cuts, and technicians entered their second day of protest leave.
Go First’s technicians, who maintain aircraft to ensure they are airworthy, went on mass sick leave at Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru on Sunday and stayed away from work on Monday too. They have also called for this form of protest on Tuesday at Ranchi, Kolkata and Ahmedabad airports in addition to the four major airports.
According to a source from the airline’s engineering team, the anger is over low salaries. Though technicians have not faced pay cuts, they typically earn ₹18,000 to ₹20,000 and some recent increments offered by the airline were of mere “₹40-50”. “We work in extremely hazardous circumstances often with little training. The job of a technician is not very different from aircraft maintenance engineers but they get paid between 1/15th to 1/6th of the latter even though their role demands a high level of technical skills,” said the person who also shared similar concerns over salaries and nominal increments.
