New Delhi: Air India Unions, on Wednesday (October 13), wrote a joint letter to the Secretary of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, raising their concerns related to cash, leave, medical benefits, accommodation of employees and arrears, among others.

The request by unions has come after the Indian government recently accepted Tata Sons bid to buy the national carrier. The salt-to-hotels conglomerate has bid to buy the debt-laden Air India for Rs 18,000 crores, a move that will see the return of the carrier to the company after 70 years.

Currently, the Air India Unions are demanding that the employees should be allowed to stay in airline flats till monetisation or at least for a year as Tatas are giving a one-year employment guarantee.

In their letter, the unions said, “ All Unions have been promised their leave encashment from the time meetings held by the then Hon Minister of Civil Aviation and then-Secretary MOCA since Jan 2020 until the most recent meeting with CMD-AI on 01/09/2021.”

“As unions, we demand that the option to encash or carry forward immediately our PL/SL be clarified before the handover. Those who opt to encash it now may commence with new leave accounts, and those who have opted to carry forward may be credited with that leave balance,” the unions added in their letter

The unions also mentioned that they had requested the ministry to allow employees to continue living in the colonies until their superannuation or monetization since the subsidiaries were not being transferred.