We all joined cathay as mercenaries. It was always a ****hole company to work for. But they paid well enough, provided well enough benefits and most importantly had a good enough contract to attract us all. They used the contents of the contracts, specifically certain provisions of it to entice us to join. How you could calculate your career-long earnings, how "last in-first out" meant your chances of losing your job in times of strain would be reduced thus your loyalty and longevity rewarded.
When they cut our pay & benefits in half, we didnt have our jobs anymore, we then had only half of our jobs. Not temporarily, but permanently.
Imagine if cathay had somehow not lost almost half of its pilots in 2.5 years and could now be matching the record profits EK & SQ are raking in, with the cathay pilots now making half as much. How convenient would that have been? That's what cathay managers had dreamt of with their bet. How delusional could they have been? They treated their employees with harsh disloyalty and the result is biting them in the a$$. They can't attract employees at any level, even the non-skilled short term classifications such as ramp workers.
They should have laid off a certain percentage they couldn't use and didn't want to pay for sitting at home, like every other respectful airline does, with the express promise of returning to work once things pick back up. If pay & benefits cuts were absolutely needed, they should have been made clear to be temporary until the crisis passes. It's not just what they did, it's how they did it. Never engaging us via our collective representation union or otherwise about any of it. One morning they told us via email our contracts are canceled and sign this new thing (which isn't a contract by any stretch of imagination) or you're fired in 2 weeks. Utter disregard with a big middle finger.
Thus they flushed down the toilet permanently all of those important factors they had used over the years to lure us mercenaries to work for them. None of us grew up dreaming of flying for cathay pacific of hong kong one day, none. We came for the money, and the contracts they so intently held up in front of us pointing to its shiny provisions.
Back then they knew correctly they wouldn't be able to attract unless they offered the compensation package they offered us. Somehow they placed a giant bet they could now somehow attract/retain the pilots they need without that compensation package. Well that bet has proven a bad bet in a bad way. Even if they would have been to replace every one of those almost 2000 pilots who have left with new ones 1 for 1, imagine the training cost. Not that cathay has the training capacity to train much more than a couple of hundred off the street pilots a year anyway. It never had. There is a need for a considerably larger training department with its astronomically higher cost. What they have done is costing cathay considerably more than keeping all those pilots on payroll until now. But like I said, their colonial low character won't allow them to ever admit a mistake, by even attempting to correct it.
Now having lost any credibility as an employer they're reaping what they've sown.
A lot of us who have left cathay are here to warn others.
A lot of them don't realize that cathay is hiring them under "NO CONTRACT". Only a loose document amendable at anytime in any way at sole discretion of the company. Everything cathay is telling them in the process of hiring them is a lie. What money theyll get paid, how much their housing cost & conditions will be, what aircraft fleet they'll be on, upgrade times, etc.
If we don't put on display here what a toxic employer cathay is, where else would prospective newhires get the truth? From cathay itself? Laughable.
Cathay is a sinking ship with incompetent & unscrupulous management at the helm. Act accordingly.