Strait Lies, 28 June 2003 – Page 1, Home Section
Business picking up for travel agents
“They are gearing up for year-end holiday season; WHO’s decision to take China and Hong Kong off list of Sars-hit areas is helping recovery”
A return to pre-sars levels by next year?
“It’s picking up very nicely now. The momentum in June is strong across all markets…. By early next year, I think we’ll be back to levels we had pre-Sars. We’re seeing steady growth now and we’re stepping up our marketing.”
-Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry Tharman Shanmugaratnam
Surely the Lies and the minister are off-message here? Should it not be “Catastrophy continues. Future of Singapore Airlines and the Republic in grave doubt”?
Am I the only one labouring under the delusion that the airline is manfully coping, day to day teetering on the verge of imminent bankruptcy, whilst others know, in actuality, that vast cash reserves are taking the immediate strain of contemporary events and that traffic is on the up and up, with the woes of the past couple of months now seen in context as mere blips on a wider screen of a past thirty years of exclusively profitable SIA business activity?
If I am not so deluded and others are wrong, I think the minister should be urgently informed that he is sketching entirely the wrong backdrop to Monday’s upcoming confrontation in the Industrial Arbitration Court (IAC) between Alpa-s and SIA, as reported on page 2 of the same Lies section, where the latter party will be seeking of the former party, on the main basis of recent losses sustained, an unprecedented and permanent 22.5% salary reduction for captains and a 15% reduction for first officers, coupled with the implementation of a 10 to 12 days no-pay leave scheme, to be rostered every two months, both of which proposals would effectively gross the salary reductions to approximately 48% for captains and 40% for first officers.
Obviously, as SIA is on the point of going down in the next few hours, the above proposals are entirely reasonable and, indeed, so much so that they should to be transmitted post-haste to the senior managements of Cathay Pacific, Eva, China et al, who’s hide-bound, introverted senior personnel have yet to see the light cast by these finer points of a pioneering, imaginative and innovative abrogation of the stuffy old tenets of traditional business principle and move to implement a similarly far-sighted programme.
Of which, I have just been rereading the “Boys’ Own Book of Free Market Capitalism” who’s content in former days, SIA and the government strictly adhered to, but, in today’s vibrant times, have now wisely consigned to the bin of history.
In Chapter five of my copy, it clearly states that shareholders shall wholly and exclusively take all the risks of an enterprise (such as boring old losses) and equally exclusively enjoy the full rewards of such enterprise (exciting profits).
Now, I have not recently noticed in either myself or my colleagues, a wholesale reduction in efficiency, productivity or availability to fly the roster and I’ve certainly heard nothing from SIA to suggest that this might be the case. Further, as far as I am aware, none of the airline’s pilots, engineers or ground staff has yet been implicated as being directly responsible for either the recent Gulf War 2 or the SARS epidemic, although it is prudent to presume that investigations into the matter continue. I think it reasonable, therefore, to assume that SIA’s colourful and vividly couched proposed salary reduction programme is not based on sanctioning either of these two speculative omissions or commissions but is based on an entirely different premise.
I can only conclude, hence, that for the first time in the history of free market capitalism, the shareholders will not now be alone in shouldering the tribulations of risk (loss) but, in an enthralling departure from stifling convention, will now be sharing it with a new breed of, albeit reluctant, risk takers - the employees. For how else can it be seen, when, for the first time in its history, the airline’s shareholders stand to make a loss but are now bravely offering to share it with their employees? Who said Singapore had lost a coherent vision of the future? Events of next week will demonstrate otherwise.
NB. Readers are asked not to confuse their annual so called “profit sharing” augmentations of salary with profits enjoyed by the shareholders. The former is a contracted, capped, incentive based part of the salary whilst the latter is the unfettered free market reward for calculated risk taking – a principle, incidentally, usually discouraged within the airline pilot profession.
Addendum
I have just had a conversation with a colleague, re: the above posting and he has suggested that my message may have been couched in rather too oblique a manner.
He has further suggested that I should clearly spell the message out and, on reread and reflection, I agree. So here goes:
The recently sustained losses by SIA are absolutely nothing to do with the employees and it is wrong and immoral for Alpa-s and other unions to be implicated as having some responsibility in the matter.
We have no business being in the IAC and we certainly should not be dragooned into any salary reductions whatsoever – as I have made clear, contemporary losses are matters entirely for the shareholders of a company that continues to sit on huge assets and reserves and which is rapidly becoming highly profitable again – not a company on the verge of bankruptcy that requires the kind of employee sacrifice, presented as being vital, to keep it going.
Is that clear enough?
Last edited by highcirrus; 28th Jun 2003 at 13:56.