Can’t sack, Jet looking at other avenues for cost cutting

Mumbai : A day after reversing a decision to lay off 1,900 employees, Jet Airways began exploring new options to cut costs, including not renewing employment contracts and a freeze on hiring, even as some workers who had been reinstated said their faith in the company had been shaken.
Many employees danced the night away outside the Jet corporate headquarters in Mumbai’s Andheri after chairman Naresh Goyal’s midnight announcement asking them to return to work. On Friday, about 200 of them were trooped in buses and cars to a five star hotel in Nariman Point where the top management, including Goyal, executive director Saroj Dutta and chief commercial officer Sudheer Raghavan, once again regretted the decision to lay them off and assured them of a certain future in these uncertain times for the aviation industry.
While Goyal told employees that experts were finding other ways of cutting costs, a top Jet official told The Indian Express that one option being seriously explored is to not renew contracts of employees once they expire. “There are many expats who are working with us and many of them are pilots whose contracts may not be renewed,” the official said.
Dutta refused to confirm or deny this. But he said that further cost cuts would come from reducing flight capacities as well as trimming frequency of flights.
18/10/08 Shashank Shekhar/Indian Express

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Categories: Jet Airways Oct 2008