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Old 24th Dec 2018, 18:10
  #19 (permalink)  
Kitsune
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: England
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Originally Posted by Tea time
The problem is ,as someone else correctly pointed out ,that by accepting a lower standard of COS the newjoiners inadvertently reinforce the management belief that the salary is too high . Back in the 80;s and early 90’s Cathay was the airline that everyone aspired to join , competition to get in was fierce and the selection process was tough. If you were lucky enough to get in, the job was great, salaries were good, COS were very adequate and the company looked after you, so no one complained and the crew were always happy to go the extra mile without being asked. It was a winning formula .
Then about 1997 the accountants got involved with senior management on how to save a few bucks , the easy target was the pilot’s salaries. There was a already a degree of jealousy from the non aviation part of the company who saw us as overpaid , underworked prima donnas , this was quietly endorsed by senior management because they never tried to quash the underlying impression.
I remember going to focus nights put on by the company where it was espoused that if we didn’t accept pay and COS cuts the company was going to go bust. This was the beginning of the industrial dispute that continues to this day .
COS 99 was imposed on the workforce with sign or be fired , then came ASL followed by B scales , people who joined on B scales and I’m not pointing fingers or blaming anyone for doing so ,sealed the fate of the original pay scales which then became known as A scales. From this point on it’s been a downward trend of COS cuts , leave reduced , flying hours increased, overtime reduced , medical cover reduced , housing reduced , the list goes on and on . Yet management managed to squander $4 plus billion on a lousy fuel hedge and no one is called to account , so I have to ponder who was on the other side of the fuel hedge .
Then came C scales and finally COS 18 , so again if pilots join on COS 18 it will erode B scales even further .
What I am trying to point out is that none of the comments are truly racist, that term is a slight used frequently by the left when they cannot win an argument using logic and want to shut someone up .
It’s about pilots from other parts of the world be it South America, South Africa , South Asia who find themselves living in worse conditions than the perceived conditions offered by Cathay, and who are willing to take the offer not fully realising that by doing so they are degrading the COS of those pilots already employed .
This creates a natural resentment towards these new hires fostered by many years of industrial unrest , hence some of the comments here.
May I wish everyone a very Happy Christmas and New Year , I look forward to contributing in 2019
Probably inconvenient for you to remember, but I well remember in 1994 when GC was DFO and B scales were proposed the HKAOA as ‘twas then did its best to oppose the reduction in terms and conditions... I was at some of those discussions. We were utterly undermined by the fact that numerous pilots had already been recruited on the lower B scale conditions... and by the Captains at the time finding it difficult to believe that anyone could live in HKG on the B scale package. It’s a bit rich for those who came to CX on a reduced package to now slag off those doing exactly the same for their own reasons. It’s perhaps also worth remembering that the A Scalers were actually about to go on strike before the Company caved in in, I think, 1989. No guts, no glory.
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