State-owned Air India’s pilot unions on Friday opposed the 10 per cent cut in employees’ allowances, terming the decision as “unequal” and that goes against the spirit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal to the companies to ensure that the salaries of the employees are not slashed amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In a joint letter to Air India chief Rajiv Bansal on Friday, the Indian Pilots Guild (IPG) and Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) said the reduction in allowance was against the labour and employment ministry’s advisory to all employers of public or private establishments not to terminate their employees or reduce their wages.

“We, the flying crew of Air India feel, immensely let down by the self-serving approach of the executive management committee in the name of cost-cutting measures. The committee has completely disregarded the appeal made by the Prime Minister and the advisory from the labour and employment ministry,” the pilot unions said.

Two days after Modi’s appeal in his televised address to the nation on the 21-day lockdown to companies not to cut employees’ salaries (due to the lockdown), Air India decided to reduce 10 per cent of allowances paid to all employees, except the cabin crew, for a period of three months to tide itself over the economic fallout of Covid-19. The reduction, however, did not impact the basic pay, house rent allowance and variable dearness allowance.

On March 18, the airline had decided to withdraw the special allowance to pilots while revising downward the layover allowance for the cabin crew. Significantly, flying allowance accounts for as much as 70 per cent of a pilots’ salaries.

“By affecting a cut only on allowances, the directors and senior management executives have deviously exempted themselves from any meaningful austerity cut as their allowances are extremely small while pilots and cabin crew, who are the frontline warriors flying and risking their lives, are forced to bear the maximum cut,” the unions said in the letter.