Where is the HKAOA heading?
Having read El Presidilgo’s message today, I am getting increasingly worried as to where we, as a union, are heading. I thought we had industrial leverage with the Training Ban and Contract Compliance. What’s happened, where’s it gone, what have I missed?
I can’t help but see HPE as everyone sitting in a tent drinking the company’s koolaid, breathing in the company’s second-hand smoke, pretending to be airline managers and emerging from the tent intoxicated from their BS and announcing that it’s in our best interest to drop the Training Ban, drop our pants and touch our toes.
I’m not against employing a financial analyst, goodness knows we need help, but let’s be realistic. He’s not going to see anything the company don’t want him to see. Cathay are constantly audited and have to brief regulators, investors and lenders. This is very comfortable territory for them.
Again, I’m not taking anything away from what the Analyst may find, but I would ask that everyone remembers these numbers. All these numbers come from the company and I take them at face value.
1. The best profit the company ever made was in 2010. In that year some extraordinary profits occurred, but stripping them out, CX/KA profit was $HK9.5bn ($HK9,500m).
2. The company tells us that the Fuel Hedging losses are real expenses, not funny accounting. They say that they actually wrote out cheques for these amounts, $8.5bn in 2015 and 2016 and $3.2bn for the first six months of this year.
3. So in the 30 month period 2015- Jun 2017 we paid HK$19.2bn cash to the Fuel Hedging Markets. Chuck in HK$500m for Cargo Fines, that’s HK$19.7bn. Now let’s compare that to 30 month’s of record profit of HK$23.75bn; not dissimilar I would suggest.
Bottom line: Is it time to take a “wee break” from talks? Management can try and sweep the Fuel Hedging losses under the carpet, but let’s not forget that we are flying into one hell of a headwind. Essentially, (they say) we are presently paying the equivalent of our best profit (2010) in cash, to the Fuel Hedgers every year. But this headwind doesn’t last forever. Perhaps the smart move is to step away and return when the headwinds decrease. Let the company deal with the training backlog, resignations and delays. If/when they want our help, they know the HKAOA’s phone number.