Government will not allow work-to-rule situation, SM Lee warns SIA pilots
By S. Ramesh, Channel NewsAsia
SINGAPORE : Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew has warned Singapore Airlines' pilots that the Government will not allow a go-slow or work-to-rule situation to brew in the airline because of the tensions between management and pilots.
In the strongest words from a minister, Mr Lee said when trouble was brewing, the Government had two options - either do nothing and hope it will resolve itself or move in early to avoid severe consequences.
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Mr Lee was speaking at the Global Brand Forum in Singapore on Monday.
Mr Lee said: "This is a service industry, you have stewards or stewardess or pilots playing work-to-rule, you lose that cache. So we are telling them, both management and unions, you play this game there are going to be broken heads, let's stop it.
"They know what this is all about, we are not fools, we know what the management knows, we know the union side too, we have got unionists on our side and we are going to solve this before it gets troublesome, solve it we will.
"If we sit back and do nothing and allow this to escalate and test the wills, then it is going to loose hundreds of millions of dollars in one, two, three months. We are not going to have that." - CNA