South China Morning Post
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South China Morning Post
From Simon Parry, in Sunday's Post:
"When Cathay Pacific (SEHK: 0293) issued a direct appeal to its pilots to take unpaid leave to help the airline through the economic slump, the tone of the message from general manager for aircrew Captain Richard Hall left little room for doubt over the view management would take of those who said "no".
The option of refusing unpaid leave is "obviously open to all", Mr Hall wrote in the document sent to all cockpit crew on April 20, but he added: "You need to understand clearly the statement that electing this option makes.
Many of your colleagues have already participated in a voluntary unpaid leave scheme. It is very likely the vast majority of company employees will participate in the SLS (Special Leave Scheme) and it is therefore very likely that you will be in a very small minority of Cathay Pacific employees who have stated that they do not wish to assist the company at this difficult time."
Three days earlier, a memo to pilots from director of flight operations Nick Rhodes on the day the scheme was publicly announced spelled out in stark terms what it said were the alternatives management had considered before asking employees to opt for unpaid leave.
He wrote: "The options open to us are: 1) to invoke the redundancy clause in the contract and make crew redundant on a 'last in, first out' basis, 2) terminate contracts of crew over the age of 55 and enforce the retirement of any crew member on CoS 99 [Conditions of Service 1999] as they reach age 55, or 3) ask all crew to participate in a Corporate Unpaid Leave Scheme."
Mr Rhodes went on: "It doesn't matter to me whether you are 26 and just setting out on a career with Cathay Pacific or 56 and at the end of your career, you are still part of the flight operations team and I would like to keep that team together. This is not a good time for anyone to be out of work if you have bills to pay or your P-Fund [pension fund] has taken a beating in the economic crisis."
The message to the airline's pilots seems crystal clear. The alternative to unpaid leave is forced redundancies, and anyone who says "no" will be making a statement of disloyalty - a step surely not to be taken lightly in an airline that in 2001 sacked 49 pilots en masse on the grounds that they were not acting in the airline's best interests.
Some pilots labelled the management messages "bullying". Some flight attendants, who received similar memos from their department heads, called them "very intimidating". But Cathay Pacific insisted there was "no threat or intimidation" in the appeals, which it said were no more than a statement of facts and a call for support in an unprecedented economic crisis.
Whatever their effect, however, the airline was by Friday claiming an impressive response to the unpaid leave scheme so far with around three-quarters of flight attendants and more than 80 per cent of ground staff agreeing to it by the end of last week, comfortably ahead of the original April 30 deadline.
On Friday, however, with the Flight Attendants Union (FAU) and the Aircrew Officers Association (AOA) still refusing to recommend the scheme to their members, questions remained over the way it has been presented to staff and the potential fall-out Cathay's muscular approach might generate.
With both the FAU and AOA demanding more time, the airline's management - which hoped to secure the agreement of an overwhelming majority of staff by the end of Tuesday - was "reluctantly" persuaded to extend the deadline to May 10, sources said. Between now and then, more persuasion arguably remains to be done for the scheme to win the support the airline expects.
Perhaps predictably, the key sticking point has been the pilots, only around one in 10 of whom had agreed to take unpaid leave by Friday. The pilots, it has emerged in recent days, are the ones with potentially the most to gain and the most to lose depending on their decision.
Although the scheme was publicly announced nine days ago as one in which everyone would "share the pain" - with senior executives taking more leave than lowly flight attendants - the reality was that pilots were being offered a very different deal than everyone else behind the scenes.
Cathay Pacific took the opportunity to tackle the long-running issue of pilots' retirement age at the same time as unpaid leave, offering a one-off chance for pilots to change their conditions of service and extend their retirement age from 55 to 65 in line with other airlines worldwide if they agreed to take unpaid leave.
Talks over the retirement age extension had been ongoing for years and, in his memo to pilots on the day of the unpaid leave announcement, Mr Rhodes was confident enough to proclaim: "I am very pleased that the company and the HKAOA have reached an agreement, today, on a package which will allow the association to support the [unpaid leave] scheme."
A week later, that support was still not forthcoming.
"The problem was that Cathay insisted on bundling the conditions of service with the unpaid leave scheme and then presented it to the pilots as a fait accompli and said, `take it or leave it'," said a pilot familiar with the ongoing discussions.
"If they'd asked the union to support the unpaid leave scheme by itself, the AOA would probably have endorsed it. But it's a very complex package and while it might be good for a pilot nearing retirement age, it may not be such a good deal for a younger pilot. It needs more negotiation."
Talks between the union and management were said to have become more strained as the week wore on with no resolution in sight, the pilot said.
"Management have said the deal will be taken off the table altogether and there will be no extended retirement for anyone unless an overwhelming majority of pilots agree to unpaid leave," he said.
A Cathay Pacific spokeswoman responded: "There is no deadlock. We are discussing a number of transition issues, the details of which need to be carefully considered and refined." She insisted the new conditions of service would be honoured for those who signed up, whatever the final response from pilots to the unpaid leave scheme.
The linking of unpaid leave to new conditions of service for pilots only, while flight attendants and ground crew are asked to make the sacrifice of taking unpaid leave with no "sweeteners", is another element that has generated friction among staff.
For some, it is natural that cockpit crew should receive different - even preferential - treatment. One pilot anonymously addressing the subject on the Fragrant Harbour gossip forum wrote: "As a once very respected ex-fleet manager once said at a company propaganda meeting: 'It's like Wimbledon. The players always make more money than the ball boys'."
For the 5,000-member FAU, however, it smacks of unfairness. "We think the scheme should be fair, reasonable and justifiable," said chairwoman Becky Kwan Siu-wa. "What is available to one group of employees should be available to the other group." Not only had flight attendants not be offered any sweeteners, they had also not been offered union-management talks over the scheme, she said.
"We are willing to help," she said. "We understand what is happening to the airline industry but we won't just blindly accept anything they dish out. We want to sit down with our department heads to obtain a high level of transparency."
The FAU wants to clarify a number of issues with management before endorsing the scheme and has called for all unions to work together and take a united approach. "Our lawyer is very concerned that the scheme and the consent form for it are unfair," she said. "It asks people to sign and then says they can change the scheme from time to time. What kind of contract is that? It is like an open cheque. Would you sign an open cheque?"
Responding to the claim of uneven treatment, the spokeswoman said: "It is not unusual for different staff groups to have different conditions, particularly in the airline business ... This involved an issue that has been discussed with pilots for a number of years and provides a one-off opportunity for pilots to transfer to [new] conditions of service."
Some flight attendants were angered, too, at the way the scheme had been presented to its members. "The company has not spelt out the consequences of not signing. They say it is voluntary but the wording [of the memos to staff] is very intimidating," Ms Kwan said.
"They want you to sign and they say if you don't sign it means you will be in a minority and you don't want to help the company. That is very scary. People believe if they don't sign they will be victimised and might even get sacked."
The Cathay Pacific spokeswoman responded: "There is no threat or intimidation in our appeal to consent to the SLS. We have made it abundantly clear that the scheme is voluntary and is designed for all staff to share the pain depending on seniority.
"We have already received a very good and encouraging response from staff and we are hoping that our staff will respond to support the company at this difficult and challenging time. A substantial majority of staff has signed up to the scheme. Clearly those who have not are in the minority. This is a simple statement of fact."
As far as the airline's management is concerned, however, the wrangling over terms and presentation is akin to fiddling while Rome burns. Some employees, they clearly believe, are failing to grasp the extent of the difficulties confronting the airline and the aviation industry as a whole.
It is an issue that the airline cannot afford to ignore and must confront without delay for the good of every pilot, flight attendant and employee, executives argue. In his memo to pilots, Mr Rhodes attempted to put the issue in perspective, arguing: "The challenge we face is every bit as serious as Sars, possibly more so as we have no idea how long the economic downturn will last."
'RM
"When Cathay Pacific (SEHK: 0293) issued a direct appeal to its pilots to take unpaid leave to help the airline through the economic slump, the tone of the message from general manager for aircrew Captain Richard Hall left little room for doubt over the view management would take of those who said "no".
The option of refusing unpaid leave is "obviously open to all", Mr Hall wrote in the document sent to all cockpit crew on April 20, but he added: "You need to understand clearly the statement that electing this option makes.
Many of your colleagues have already participated in a voluntary unpaid leave scheme. It is very likely the vast majority of company employees will participate in the SLS (Special Leave Scheme) and it is therefore very likely that you will be in a very small minority of Cathay Pacific employees who have stated that they do not wish to assist the company at this difficult time."
Three days earlier, a memo to pilots from director of flight operations Nick Rhodes on the day the scheme was publicly announced spelled out in stark terms what it said were the alternatives management had considered before asking employees to opt for unpaid leave.
He wrote: "The options open to us are: 1) to invoke the redundancy clause in the contract and make crew redundant on a 'last in, first out' basis, 2) terminate contracts of crew over the age of 55 and enforce the retirement of any crew member on CoS 99 [Conditions of Service 1999] as they reach age 55, or 3) ask all crew to participate in a Corporate Unpaid Leave Scheme."
Mr Rhodes went on: "It doesn't matter to me whether you are 26 and just setting out on a career with Cathay Pacific or 56 and at the end of your career, you are still part of the flight operations team and I would like to keep that team together. This is not a good time for anyone to be out of work if you have bills to pay or your P-Fund [pension fund] has taken a beating in the economic crisis."
The message to the airline's pilots seems crystal clear. The alternative to unpaid leave is forced redundancies, and anyone who says "no" will be making a statement of disloyalty - a step surely not to be taken lightly in an airline that in 2001 sacked 49 pilots en masse on the grounds that they were not acting in the airline's best interests.
Some pilots labelled the management messages "bullying". Some flight attendants, who received similar memos from their department heads, called them "very intimidating". But Cathay Pacific insisted there was "no threat or intimidation" in the appeals, which it said were no more than a statement of facts and a call for support in an unprecedented economic crisis.
Whatever their effect, however, the airline was by Friday claiming an impressive response to the unpaid leave scheme so far with around three-quarters of flight attendants and more than 80 per cent of ground staff agreeing to it by the end of last week, comfortably ahead of the original April 30 deadline.
On Friday, however, with the Flight Attendants Union (FAU) and the Aircrew Officers Association (AOA) still refusing to recommend the scheme to their members, questions remained over the way it has been presented to staff and the potential fall-out Cathay's muscular approach might generate.
With both the FAU and AOA demanding more time, the airline's management - which hoped to secure the agreement of an overwhelming majority of staff by the end of Tuesday - was "reluctantly" persuaded to extend the deadline to May 10, sources said. Between now and then, more persuasion arguably remains to be done for the scheme to win the support the airline expects.
Perhaps predictably, the key sticking point has been the pilots, only around one in 10 of whom had agreed to take unpaid leave by Friday. The pilots, it has emerged in recent days, are the ones with potentially the most to gain and the most to lose depending on their decision.
Although the scheme was publicly announced nine days ago as one in which everyone would "share the pain" - with senior executives taking more leave than lowly flight attendants - the reality was that pilots were being offered a very different deal than everyone else behind the scenes.
Cathay Pacific took the opportunity to tackle the long-running issue of pilots' retirement age at the same time as unpaid leave, offering a one-off chance for pilots to change their conditions of service and extend their retirement age from 55 to 65 in line with other airlines worldwide if they agreed to take unpaid leave.
Talks over the retirement age extension had been ongoing for years and, in his memo to pilots on the day of the unpaid leave announcement, Mr Rhodes was confident enough to proclaim: "I am very pleased that the company and the HKAOA have reached an agreement, today, on a package which will allow the association to support the [unpaid leave] scheme."
A week later, that support was still not forthcoming.
"The problem was that Cathay insisted on bundling the conditions of service with the unpaid leave scheme and then presented it to the pilots as a fait accompli and said, `take it or leave it'," said a pilot familiar with the ongoing discussions.
"If they'd asked the union to support the unpaid leave scheme by itself, the AOA would probably have endorsed it. But it's a very complex package and while it might be good for a pilot nearing retirement age, it may not be such a good deal for a younger pilot. It needs more negotiation."
Talks between the union and management were said to have become more strained as the week wore on with no resolution in sight, the pilot said.
"Management have said the deal will be taken off the table altogether and there will be no extended retirement for anyone unless an overwhelming majority of pilots agree to unpaid leave," he said.
A Cathay Pacific spokeswoman responded: "There is no deadlock. We are discussing a number of transition issues, the details of which need to be carefully considered and refined." She insisted the new conditions of service would be honoured for those who signed up, whatever the final response from pilots to the unpaid leave scheme.
The linking of unpaid leave to new conditions of service for pilots only, while flight attendants and ground crew are asked to make the sacrifice of taking unpaid leave with no "sweeteners", is another element that has generated friction among staff.
For some, it is natural that cockpit crew should receive different - even preferential - treatment. One pilot anonymously addressing the subject on the Fragrant Harbour gossip forum wrote: "As a once very respected ex-fleet manager once said at a company propaganda meeting: 'It's like Wimbledon. The players always make more money than the ball boys'."
For the 5,000-member FAU, however, it smacks of unfairness. "We think the scheme should be fair, reasonable and justifiable," said chairwoman Becky Kwan Siu-wa. "What is available to one group of employees should be available to the other group." Not only had flight attendants not be offered any sweeteners, they had also not been offered union-management talks over the scheme, she said.
"We are willing to help," she said. "We understand what is happening to the airline industry but we won't just blindly accept anything they dish out. We want to sit down with our department heads to obtain a high level of transparency."
The FAU wants to clarify a number of issues with management before endorsing the scheme and has called for all unions to work together and take a united approach. "Our lawyer is very concerned that the scheme and the consent form for it are unfair," she said. "It asks people to sign and then says they can change the scheme from time to time. What kind of contract is that? It is like an open cheque. Would you sign an open cheque?"
Responding to the claim of uneven treatment, the spokeswoman said: "It is not unusual for different staff groups to have different conditions, particularly in the airline business ... This involved an issue that has been discussed with pilots for a number of years and provides a one-off opportunity for pilots to transfer to [new] conditions of service."
Some flight attendants were angered, too, at the way the scheme had been presented to its members. "The company has not spelt out the consequences of not signing. They say it is voluntary but the wording [of the memos to staff] is very intimidating," Ms Kwan said.
"They want you to sign and they say if you don't sign it means you will be in a minority and you don't want to help the company. That is very scary. People believe if they don't sign they will be victimised and might even get sacked."
The Cathay Pacific spokeswoman responded: "There is no threat or intimidation in our appeal to consent to the SLS. We have made it abundantly clear that the scheme is voluntary and is designed for all staff to share the pain depending on seniority.
"We have already received a very good and encouraging response from staff and we are hoping that our staff will respond to support the company at this difficult and challenging time. A substantial majority of staff has signed up to the scheme. Clearly those who have not are in the minority. This is a simple statement of fact."
As far as the airline's management is concerned, however, the wrangling over terms and presentation is akin to fiddling while Rome burns. Some employees, they clearly believe, are failing to grasp the extent of the difficulties confronting the airline and the aviation industry as a whole.
It is an issue that the airline cannot afford to ignore and must confront without delay for the good of every pilot, flight attendant and employee, executives argue. In his memo to pilots, Mr Rhodes attempted to put the issue in perspective, arguing: "The challenge we face is every bit as serious as Sars, possibly more so as we have no idea how long the economic downturn will last."
'RM
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Finally
The SCMP have called CX's bluff. I have waited for this day for a long time.
We need to stay strong folks this a big turning point. We need to join with the FAU on this one. No more divide and conquer. Remember the boys and girls down the back feed us and are on their feet all night. Let's show them some compassion and co-operation.
I am calling on the AOA to work with the FAU so we ALL get a good deal.
Again, CX made this mess and WE SHOULD NOT PAY FOR IT!
STAY STRONG, STAY UNITED!
CX management should be emabarrsed and ashamed of themselves.
I for one am calling for NR to resign!
We need to stay strong folks this a big turning point. We need to join with the FAU on this one. No more divide and conquer. Remember the boys and girls down the back feed us and are on their feet all night. Let's show them some compassion and co-operation.
I am calling on the AOA to work with the FAU so we ALL get a good deal.
Again, CX made this mess and WE SHOULD NOT PAY FOR IT!
STAY STRONG, STAY UNITED!
CX management should be emabarrsed and ashamed of themselves.
I for one am calling for NR to resign!
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Will CoS08 really be withdrawn if majority don't agree?
Quote from the article:
"Management have said the deal will be taken off the table altogether and there will be no extended retirement for anyone unless an overwhelming majority of pilots agree to unpaid leave," he said.
A Cathay Pacific spokeswoman responded: "There is no deadlock. We are discussing a number of transition issues, the details of which need to be carefully considered and refined." She insisted the new conditions of service would be honoured for those who signed up, whatever the final response from pilots to the unpaid leave scheme.
"Management have said the deal will be taken off the table altogether and there will be no extended retirement for anyone unless an overwhelming majority of pilots agree to unpaid leave," he said.
A Cathay Pacific spokeswoman responded: "There is no deadlock. We are discussing a number of transition issues, the details of which need to be carefully considered and refined." She insisted the new conditions of service would be honoured for those who signed up, whatever the final response from pilots to the unpaid leave scheme.
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"You need to understand clearly the statement that electing this option makes."
I fly a multi-million dollar aircraft with up to 400 pax on board and this is how I'm being treated , like an idiot ?
Immature bullying tactics , fit for a teenager with a chip on his shoulder .
Not fit to be in charge of an internationally acclaimed airline.
As a manager , this is a particularly insensitive and offensive comment to be saying .
Now that it is public , it should deserve the attention it has so invited.
RH live by the sword , die by the sword.
Good luck
I fly a multi-million dollar aircraft with up to 400 pax on board and this is how I'm being treated , like an idiot ?
Immature bullying tactics , fit for a teenager with a chip on his shoulder .
Not fit to be in charge of an internationally acclaimed airline.
As a manager , this is a particularly insensitive and offensive comment to be saying .
Now that it is public , it should deserve the attention it has so invited.
RH live by the sword , die by the sword.
Good luck
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The linking of unpaid leave to new conditions of service for pilots only, while flight attendants and ground crew are asked to make the sacrifice of taking unpaid leave with no "sweeteners", is another element that has generated friction among staff
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Cabin crew overnights
I believe during SARS the company reduced the overnight length for cabin crew to that of the flight crew. Any mention of that now to safe costs? No. They are too powerful.
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"It asks people to sign and then says they can change the scheme from time to time. What kind of contract is that? It is like an open cheque."
So basically, if by the beginning of 2010 things aren't looking brighter, they can legally extend the scheme and increase the amount of money you will give without having to ask you, as you would have already agreed to it! You may give one week now, but the company has the right to take more later!
Read the fine prints. It's a very scary contract to sign. Still don't understand why so many have sign it so fast
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simple...
because as with most contracts, people simply DON'T bother to read the fine print!!
When you eventually do, you'll realize that it's too late to do anything about it..
So for all those who are still happily thinking about signing up before the deadline..THINK very very carefully about this - you are giving the company carte blanche!!
because as with most contracts, people simply DON'T bother to read the fine print!!
When you eventually do, you'll realize that it's too late to do anything about it..
So for all those who are still happily thinking about signing up before the deadline..THINK very very carefully about this - you are giving the company carte blanche!!
