Lowkoon, you mentioned:
Are they so in touch that they choose a time where they are losing guys at a record rate to take on the pilot body? Breathtaking in its stupidity.
They see the current (soon to be no longer able to be taken advantage of) fuel hedging loss as justification for 'the sky is falling'. They feel if they don't act now, against both sets of 'group' pilots, they'll lose that chance. It was never about sacking 600 relatively low paid workers in the paper shuffling department, that was simply justification for their real goal - ARAPA.
So stupidity? Yes in many ways they are.
For years they have chased cents whilst missing dollars, and never missed an opportunity to demean and degrade the pilots in the eyes of all the other staff.
From taking away the expat travel desk in the early 90's, to giving everyone a mug with their name on except pilots, to comparing hard landing costs with billions of dollars of fuel hedging losses.
If this was a genuine crisis, our swire mangers (sic) would be greeting workers with a bow at the front of HelloKittyCity, apologizing for their incompetent management skills and the billions of dollars of losses, and leading from the front with, limiting themselves to the same ARAPA type levels as existing staff who are on it, (and to remain so until ARAPA staff get an increase), double digit percentage pay cuts themselves, and zero bonuses, from either swire or cx.
Until they lead from the front, then there is NO REAL CRISIS.
This is just a money grab, to reduce costs now under a convenient, possibly even engineered loss, type of excuse in order to maximise profits AND huge bonuses, only equaled by the champagne popping laughing backslapping that will occur if this ARAPA attack is allowed to continue without an equal reaction back.
This is the line in the sand, they've crossed it. Time to push back.
I hear there's a lot of flu, bad backs, migraines and diarrhea around very shortly, and it's likely to be very contagious
Is this to be led by the AOA and our president? Of course not, he's out stealing another spine from a jellyfish.
Rod - where are you?
So Lowkoon, you asked are they that stupid, yes sir, I think they are.