Originally Posted by
Trafalgar
It cannot be said often enough: resolve to cause maximum disruption over the holidays. Everyone one of us must take action.
Will anything really happen this time? Or, is it still like 2001?
July 16, 2001
Asia's Airline Unions See Little Result
From Following in U.S. Labor Path
By ZACH COLEMAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
HONG KONG -- It took 37 years for pilots at Cathay Pacific Airways to vote to take industrial action against the airline.
They may wish they had waited longer.
So far, Hong Kong government officials have restricted their involvement in the Cathay dispute to exhorting the pilots to work out and end their job action. However, the legal environment is formidable enough.
To combat Cathay pilots' work-to-rule campaign -- meant to prompt delays by meticulously sticking to flight safety rules -- the airline has chartered planes and crew from nine other airlines to operate flights on its behalf and cut extended flight legs that are vulnerable to delays. More directly, Cathay has fired 52 of its 1,600 pilots since July 5, including several union leaders and negotiators, and forsaken the collapsed talks with the union by implementing a package of raises and benefit improvements on its own.
"The union has been totally de-fanged by Cathay," says Jim Eckes, managing director of consultancy Indoswiss Aviation in Hong Kong.
Because Hong Kong lacks collective bargaining, the union has no voice to represent pilots up for disciplinary action. Furthermore, employees who participate in union actions during work hours have few legal protections against being fired, according to Wilson W.S. Chow, associate law professor at the University of Hong Kong. The lack of collective bargaining, however, also means the union is not a party to Cathay's pilot contracts and so is free to take industrial action during the term of contract without fear of lawsuit, admits Tony Tyler, the airline's corporate development director.
http://www.pprune.org/50835-post1.html