National carrier Kenya Airways has been directed to pay pilots full salary during the days they were on leave following the grounding of aircraft over Covid-19 pandemic.
Alternatively, Employment and Labour Relations court judge Maureen Onyango directed the airline to assign the leave taken proportionately to the salary earned during the period of leave.
In a balance for the airline and members of the Kenya Airline Pilots Association (Kalpa) Justice Onyango said it was inevitable for the pilots to be on leave during the lockdown, as there were no flights then.
She added that it was not logical as well to expect an employee who has a lot of accumulated leave to go on special leave that does not affect the accumulated leave.
“At the same time, it is not logical to send an employee on leave at reduced pay when the leave was accumulated at full pay,” the judge said.
In the dispute, Kalpa accused the airline of mismanaging its members’ annual leave, such that most of them had huge leave balances over the years
A summary of leave produced in court showed an outstanding 500,000 leave days in respect of 443 pilots.
The pilots said the huge leave balances arose because they worked long hours and sacrificed their rest and annual leave.
On March 17, 2020 Kenya Airways CEO Allan Kilavuka issued a memo informing employees of pay cut of between 25 per cent and 35 per cent for the leadership team and the CEO, respectively.
