Cathay Pacific imploding.

[Sam Ting Wong]

With all due respect, but "actively looking to get out" ? What does that even mean? From a management's perspective they are showing up at sign on, and that is that. Nobody cares if they do so happy or sad. Frank A. Memphis, Tiger Pork, Dream 746 and Klinger all make good points in my opinion. Reality is Cathay can recruit globally, with no experience. Possibly soon infinite numbers from up North. Delta can't.

Fact is the majority is interested in keeping their job and will not go on strike, and with fair reason. The picture of the brave and heroic Westerner who is fiercely defending his contract is fanciful. There is almost no risk involved at home, legislation protects union delegates etc. I find it a bit rich to look down on locals who are somehow not "brought up" to fight. Maybe watch the Joshua documentary and spare a thought for the hundreds of locals in confinement as we speak and then think again. Some are just lucky and live and work in the right country, that's all. No personal achievement. The political system in HK is realistically most probably too dominant, the pilot group too diverse. Industrial action most likely will not happen, it's not very useful nor fair to scapegoat. Market forces reign here, for the better and the worse. For what it's worth, my vote is in favor of industrial action, but I have almost zero hope it will ever happen. Is anyone today denying the almost ridiculous picture of past "actions", like training and union membership ban? If we go for it it must be more serious than that, no more pretending, it must be real with all the possible consequences. Everything else is embarrassing. Against the notion of Piet I am not against industrial actions, I just don't believe it will happen. Bring it on.

Speaking of the devil, Piet, as usual, obsessively I dare say identifies individual misconduct and cowardly opportunism as the culprit. After joining as B scaler himself and leaving without a single day on strike he is now pointing fingers at his old colleagues. Ironically, after Cathay, the Piets of this world often join a low cost or start-up back home, because it serves them. The very companies in competition with the worshipped unions (and hence often closed-up) flagshps. Undercutting the colleagues on bigger pay at home then suddenly is ok. Or even better, they come back as direct entry captains to Cathay. After finally realizing not all is so rosy out there. After the cuts, with no housing, but conveniently on their fleet of choice. To be very clear, I personally have no problem with that, things change, but to point fingers after an entire career purely following own interests, this is really textbook hypocritical behaviour.

I also find it quite interesting that a lot of colleagues I flew with, especially Americans and Brits, quite often are politically positioned well to the right. Which is fine of course in principle, none of my business. They move voluntarily to a place they know has no comparable labor rights, they happily enjoyed the free market in HK resulting in cheap labor while it served them, domestic helper for instance. The low tax, only possible because of a hardcore neoliberal system. More than once I heard colleagues arguing the political unrest should stop, better to accept the circumstances and live with it ( read: don't protest if it damages the airline business/tourism). They shook their heads when Uber was restriced in HK, and every taxi fare rise was met with disgust. They accepted based positions, simply because the pay was alright and it suited their lifestyle. No real union power was just fine as long as the pay and the number of G days was. They lived and breathed free movement of labor, as expats, following market forces, always on the look out for the best deal. Adam Smith's free agent incarnations. Living the capitalist dream. But the moment it's against their interests they turn into little Trotzkis or Brexiteers. Well, different discussion I guess.