Cathay cabin crew fear retaliation
Cathay Pacific has been urged not to "retaliate" against its flight attendants after they won a $ 280 million payout from the airline by taking it to court for denying them automatic annual pay rises for the past seven years.
Cabin crew are anxious about a backlash after Cathay was defeated in the High Court last month, forcing it to increase salaries and award back pay from 1998, according to the leader of the Flight Attendants Union Becky Kwan Siu -wa.
Concerns were heightened by a memo circulated to cabin crew by Peter Langslow, general manager for inflight services, saying the airline would pay the money this month but would seek "corresponding reductions" in crew costs or increased productivity.
"There is a threat there," said Ms Kwan, who believed the wording of the memo sent out on Thursday was intentionally vague. "Any company has the right to control costs at any time but it shouldn't be done as retaliation.
"Some of our members fear the firm will retaliate by making our lives miserable but we hope it will have more sense than to do that.
"Happy crews mean happy passengers and that means profit for the airline. If you have miserable crews, eventually the airline will suffer."
She said she had urged members not to fear a backlash as a result of the court victory.
Cathay announced on Friday it would not appeal against a High Court ruling last month that it had breached the contracts of three flight attendants hired before 1998 by scrapping the pay scales entitling them to automatic annual pay increments.
The judgment means 3,400 flight attendants are entitled to pay rises of thousands of dollars a month each and back pay averaging more than $ 80,000 to compensate them for their losses over the past seven years.
Ms Kwan described the victory and the subsequent pay award as "a great achievement for our union movement" but added: "I really hope we can put these issues behind and look to the future."
She said many of the flight attendants involved in the court case would be prepared to work extra hours if the company wanted to increase productivity, provided their original contract conditions were respected.
Cathay's argument that it had been forced to do away with the pay scales because of the economic downturn and had looked after its staff in other ways was rejected by the court.
Scores of flight attendants have been filing claims for back pay to the Labour Tribunal based on last month's ruling and Ms Kwan said those claims would not be immediately withdrawn.
The union would first seek talks with the airline to make sure their calculations for back pay and pay rises owed to monthly-paid flight attendants matched up.
A Cathay spokeswoman said the airline had decided to settle the legal matter because it wanted to "put this all behind us and move on".