The unforeseen developments in the aviation industry over the past few months have led to almost 1,600 job cuts by two of the country?s largest carriers Jet Airways and Kingfisher over the past couple of months.
Kingfisher offered voluntary retirement (VRS) to around 300 employees last month in order to save around Rs 5 crore annually. Similarly, JetLite offered 687 employees a voluntary separation scheme (VSS) of which 387 took it leaving around 300 with jobs in the airline.
And then the biggest of them all?Naresh Goel promoted Jet Airways decided to terminate rather than confirm between 800 and 1,000 probationers and unconfirmed personnel working in the airline on Tuesady. But on Wednesday, the airline, said it would sack nearly 1,900 (including 800 already retrenched) staff altogether in the greater interest of the airline.
?As a consequence (of the economic downturn), personnel hired for the expansion (of Jet), probationers and unconfirmed personnel, (who have been recently hired), will have to be released,? a statement signed by the airline?s CEO, Wolfgang Prock Schauer said.
?As a first step, around 800 flight attendants, recently recruited for the planned expansion program, which has now been suspended, have been released,? the statement added.
However, the latest round of layoffs has nothing to do with the newly announced alliance with Kingfisher but was already decided after the airline undertook a review of its domestic and international routes. The airline decided to cut some routes and prune some others and also decided to hold off some its new international and domestic routes that were in the pipeline.
According to sources, many of these employees had almost finished a year of service and were all set to be confirmed. The sacked employees have been give 30-days pay as compensation as opposed to most companies that give probationers a weeks pay as compensation.
This had to be done as we had to cut our wage bill, an official from Jet Airways said.
The carrier is in the process of releasing personnel in other categories including cockpit crew and management personnel to reflect the lower number of flights and seats offered by the carrier. ?The cuts will be across all the activities of the airline,? a spokesperson of the airline said.
Hinting at Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) participation on the entire issue, Jet executive director Saroj Datta said, ?All political parties are rational and understand the measures taken by a business organisation to achieve operational efficiencies. It is unfortunate that 850 employees have separated from us.? The retrenched staff of Jet Airways on Wednesday approached MNS chief Raj Thackeray to get their jobs back. The airline has a staff strength of 13,000 employees currently. Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines sources said that they were looking into further cuts due to the cost saving from the new alliance.