New Delhi, August 23:

Employees of Indian Airlines (IA) have threatened an agitation this month to press for higher pay. Some 13,000 workers of the state-owned carrier will hold nationwide demonstrations on Thursday and wear black badges while at work the next day, followed by a hunger strike Aug 29, the Communist Party of India-Marxist backed Centre of India Trade Unions said. “Further delay in wage settlement will lead to an escalation of the agitation throughout the country,” the trade union’s president M K Pandhe and its general secretary and Rajya Sabha member Chittabrata Majumdar said in a joint statement. Union members said 35 per cent of the workers in the airline accounted for 80 per cent of the carrier’s wages, while the other 65 per cent — part of the Air Corporation Employees Union — got only 20 per cent of the emoluments. While the wages of the employees of other companies in the sector had been revised, those of IA was pending.