This article is in todays 'South China Morning Post' (the main HongKong english language daily).
No longer on their best
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Unlike Tung Chee-hwa (HK Chief Exec...who blasted the CX pilots), I have no particular opinions on the rights and wrongs of the threatened industrial action by Cathay Pacific pilots. Even if right was on their side, it was never going to be easy for a bunch of highly paid expatriates working for a foreign-owned firm to win much public sympathy in this strike-averse community.
What is alarming is the decline in standards of behaviour by top management at Cathay, and at some other public companies where senior executives act not as hirelings responsible to shareholders at large but as though they were owners of enterprises who can demand feudal loyalty and boot-licking behaviour from their employees and even the public.
What is so disturbing about Cathay is the repeated failure of its management to maintain reasonable relations with its staff, whether they are cabin crew or pilots. That is not surprising if the behaviour of its chief executive David Turnbull is a guide.
This doubtless so-well-brought-up gentleman was recently in the news for sacking a pilot who had the nerve to toss some monkey nuts at him in a Cathay private club bar. At a stroke, Mr Turnbull presented himself as a self-important and humourless individual who put his own inflated sense of dignity before the broader interests of the company. His petty spite did nothing to improve the attitudes of his disgruntled staff, and, if my anecdotal soundings are any guide, was negative for frequent-flyer loyalty.
This is all the more disturbing given that Cathay is part of the Swire Group which for generations has been known in Hong Kong for its excellent staff relations, exhibiting the better aspects of both colonial and Confucian paternalism. Has it changed its attitude because the paternalist outlook has gone with the empire? Or because of the pressure on management for short-term profit performance to satisfy investment bank analysts at the expense of long-term corporate and employee interests? Or is this just another example of the spread of boorishness among Brits in general?
....now back to our own private forum.....
