Employees forgo non-veg to help cut costs for Air India

NEW DELHI: Air India employees in Delhi have offered to turn vegetarian ��� as their bit to keep the airline afloat. The AI canteen at Delhi airport caters to between 700 and 1,100 employees daily where a veg thali comes for Rs 2.50.
Chicken is served thrice a week and the two-piece dish plus the veg thali hikes the price to a princely Rs 3.50. AI spends about Rs 20 lakh a month through its subsidiary, Hotel Corporation, which runs the five-star Centaur for its employees here ��� while the revenue adds up to barely a couple of lakhs, going veg would save up to Rs 3 lakh.
"We can't allow the thali price to be raised.So to cut cost on canteen front, we have proposed going veg. This is one of the cost-cutting measures we have given to the management and it has been received very well," AI union leader V J Deka said. Though merged on paper, this AI union proposal has drawn sneers from Indian Airlines old-timers who call it "too little, too late".
IA canteens in Delhi ��� where 100 kg of chicken was consumed every week ��� and Chennai turned vegetarian on March 23, 2004. In Delhi, a thali costs Rs 10. And days later, on April 1, 2004, IA hiked thali prices in the union's bastion at Kolkata. A veg thali's price there went up from about Re 1 to Rs 7.50.
Taking a chicken and fish dish would take the price up to Rs 11 and Rs 15, respectively, in the Kolkata IA canteen. "Going veg in Delhi was tough as employees here loved chicken, while Chennai was easier. The saving from this simple move was Rs 50 to 60 crore annually," said a senior official.
Turning veg in some places happened when IA officials asked for their performance-linked incentive (PLI) then. "We were told to make sacrifices if we wanted PLI. So these moves were part of that," said a IA old-timer.