Flight attendants line up lawsuits after court ruling on pay rise
Scores of Cathay Pacific flight attendants are lining up to file claims against the airline after a successful High Court challenge over the scrapping of automatic annual pay rises.
Three flight attendants will seek payouts ranging from $ 80,000 to $ 138,000 at Labour Tribunal hearings scheduled for April 13. Meanwhile, new cases are being prepared at a rate of six a day by the union representing cabin crew.
Following the airline's defeat in the High Court, up to 3,400 serving and retired flight attendants hired before 1998 may be entitled to claim the automatic annual increments Cathay abolished during the economic downturn.
Three litigants successfully argued in the Court of First Instance that Cathay was in breach of contract by abolishing the pay scales that existed when they were hired. The case was prepared and funded by the Flight Attendants Union.
The union said it had since sought talks with Cathay to find a way of settling the claims of other flight attendants affected by the ruling but the airline had not responded. "They have snubbed us. We have had no reply," said union leader Becky Kwan Siu-wa.
Ms Kwan said the union did not have enough staff to immediately process the claims of each flight attendant affected by the ruling.
"It is going to take forever so I hope the judge at the Labour Tribunal will do the first three cases and then ask Cathay to sort out the rest of the claims. If we have to take every case individually to the Labour Tribunal, it is going to be a waste of taxpayers' money."
In addition to the three cases scheduled for April 13, about a dozen more cases have been prepared to go before the Labour Tribunal, Ms Kwan said.
If the court decision stands, Cathay could be made to pay up to $ 350 million, according to union estimates, in back-pay to cabin crew hired under the old monthly contracts and denied annual increments.
However, a spokeswoman for Cathay Pacific said yesterday that its lawyers were still studying the court ruling delivered on March 4, and had not yet decided whether to challenge it in the Court of Appeal. An appeal could effectively put on hold any payouts to cabin crew claiming unpaid increments until the matter is settled.
Before the court case, Cathay offered each flight attendant a one-off "goodwill" payment of $ 6,000 to $ 11,000, according to rank, on top of pay rises totalling 7.5 per cent over the next three years.
The out-of-court offer - which would have cost the airline $ 24.3 million - was rejected by the union as "an insult".
Cathay claimed at the hearing that it had been forced to shelve the annual increments because of the economic downturn and increased competition.
It said it had looked after its staff throughout the downturn, paying bonuses and giving other benefits to flight attendants while refusing to cut jobs.