IANS

New Delhi, Aug 26: The Air India employees continued its marathon meeting with the management late Tuesday even as the airlines agreed to immediately release their salaries, officials said.

"We are still in talks with our CMD (chairman and managing director) Arvind Yadav. We have not taken any decision as of now. We would continue with our hunger strike," Anand Prakash, joint secretary of the ACEU (Air Corporation Employees Union) told IANS Tuesday night.

He added that the meeting would continue further for an hour or two.

Earlier in the day, some 20,000 employees of cash-strapped national carrier Air India began a three-day hunger strike across various airports to protest delayed salaries.

However, flight operations had not been impacted, said an Air India spokesperson. "We have a well formulated contingency plan and have deployed additional manpower to ensure smooth operations," he said.

The striking employees, about half of Air India's staff strength, are affiliated to two major unions -- the ACEU and Aviation Industry Employees Guild (AIEG). The rest are members of other unions.

"We have been working hard and trying to help the management to overcome the losses in our airline. But the management is delaying and ignoring us. It is also reducing our salaries to half. This is not acceptable to us," ACEU general secretary J.B. Kadian said earlier Tuesday.

He also stated that the government could decide on their pay cuts, not the airline.

Earlier, in July, the employees had gone on strike for two hours and staged demonstrations over the issue.