Cathay's continued tactics
Cathay's continued tactics
Eddington fought a dirty battle. His managers sought to split the flight attendants on ethnic lines by trying to set Filipino strike-breakers against Korean and Malaysian pickets. These tactics failed as the multi-ethnic, largely female workforce fought the dispute with verve. They marched through the streets of Hong Kong, and 1,000 flight crew members occupied then governor Chris Patten’s garden, calling on him to intervene.
When the strike ended, Hong Kong’s legislative council set up a 14-strong monitoring group to ensure Cathay did not victimise strikers. Spitefully, Cathay immediately evicted all unions from their offices on company premises. The unions launched a five-year legal battle to get the offices back. Eventually, the two sides managed to reach an amicable agreement over the premises, but only once Eddington had finally left Cathay.
Speaking in 1993, Eddington said he had learnt two lessons from the Cathay dispute. First, he said there was a need for tougher labour laws – including legislation allowing firms to sack strikers and force unions into ‘cooling-off periods’. Second, he said it was important to try and win such battles in the media. Reflecting on press coverage of the strike, he said: ‘Clearly, when it was 4,000 pretty girls against a bunch of old men in grey suits, we didn’t stand a chance. But that didn’t mean we didn’t have to try.’
Winning over the press became a lot easier in 1999, when Eddington joined the board of Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp. He earned $65,000 last year for attending six board meetings. Without revealing Eddington’s involvement with its parent company, The Sun launched a one-sided attack against the GMB during the Heathrow dispute. According to the NewsCorp newspaper, strikers were recreating ‘1970s anarchy’, spoiling honeymoons and motivated by ‘sheer spite and bloody-mindedness’.
Eddington got onto the NewsCorp board because Murdoch once part-owned an Australian air firm called Ansett. Impressed by his role in the Cathay Pacific strike, Murdoch made Eddington Ansett chairman in 1997. Eddington slashed away at the company’s workforce. Australians joked: ‘How do you develop a small airline? Give a big one to Rod Eddington.’