Your Future - The Writing is on the Wall … if you Wish to Read it
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/...flying-manager
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/...-end-four-year
Cathay Pacific Airways has parachuted one of its star performers – a man barely halfway through leading its company restructure – into a new role tackling an issue central to the loss-making airline’s return to profitability: disgruntled pilots.
Strategic transformation head Alex McGowan is the new general manager for aircrew, sources said. McGowan had lately been in charge of turning around Hong Kong’s flagship carrier, including overseeing 600 job cuts earlier last year.
His main task will be to give the airline’s talks with pilots another shot. They stalled last November over disagreements on pay, benefits and changes to flying schedules.
To shave HK$4 billion (US$510 million) from its books by next year, Cathay Pacific has been pushing for savings on aircrew costs of up to HK$1 billion.
Union sources said they were hopeful that the new leadership in the department would yield more positive pilot talks. Changes included Chris Kempis, who replaced Anna Thompson as the airline’s director in charge of all aspects of flight operations
In an internal memo, Hong Kong’s flag carrier said it had made “progress” in recent weeks on contract details for pilots who signed with the company before 2008. It claimed the Hong Kong Aircrew Officers’ Association (HKAOA) was willing to put a new offer to a vote among its members.
Expressing cautious optimism, Chris Kempis, the airline’s new flight operations director, told staff last week: “We are approaching what I hope to be the concluding phase of negotiations with the HKAOA [and] the opportunity for a broad agreement.”
Two recent articles in the SCMP lay out CX’s plans and strategy. CX, very decently, have announced exactly when and where they are coming at you.
The first article announces the appointment of a specialist Strategic transformation head (read hatchet-man). And also precisely how much money CX wants him to take away from the current aircrew Contracts.
In true CX style, the Strategic Transformation Head’s future employment is likely to be contingent on how well he executes CX’s grand plan to extract $1 billion from the Contracts of you, the pilots.
Therefore the new DFO also gets named in the SCMP in preparation for his role as the publicly visible lead actor and eventual fall guy in case it all goes pear shaped, requiring a quick exit for the Executioner.
The second SCMP article lays out the classic expectation management with a CX initiated Press Release that an agreement with the aircrew is imminent when all and sundry know full well this to be not only false but misleading to the extreme.
This action is to undermine the aircrew’s faith in the AOA in not communicating with them and possibly doing secret deals without members approval. It will also provide a platform for CX to blame the pilots and AOA for bad faith negotiating when the AOA responds that no such agreement has been reached.
Who will the public believe once they have already been told by the SCMP that a deal was imminent?
So there you have it:
1 The Plan
2 The Time Frame
3 The Executioner
The Plan is to save $1 billion dollars in aircrew costs which will be borne by 3300 pilots. Simple math tells you the cuts will be an average of $300,000 per aircrew member.
It you don’t accept the plan cuts to your Contract willingly, they will be forced upon you by way of a non-negotiated Contract change; “Sign or you are fired!”.
They will be prepared to let a largish number leave (maybe 200?) in the hope that the majority of aircrew will be cowed into submission.
The time frame is short. The first 2 shots have been fired by CX management.
You don’t have much time to prepare a counterinsurgency defence or a direct attack plan.
Consider your Options now:
1 Fight; or
2 Flight