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Tuesday, June 19, 2001

Cathay pilots' vote going ahead after crunch talks

JO BOWMAN
Last-ditch talks between Cathay Pacific and its pilots yesterday failed to convince staff to abandon their vote tomorrow on industrial action that could play havoc with summer flights.
Company bosses spent more than two hours with the heads of the Aircrew Officers Association at the Labour Department's headquarters in Sheung Wan.

They issued a joint statement afterwards saying they had agreed to meet again on Thursday. But union general secretary John Findlay last night said there were no plans to call off the pilots' vote. "Nothing has changed. The extraordinary general meeting was called over five weeks ago and it's going ahead," he said.

All parties have made a secrecy pact under which they will not reveal anything said during the talks. But one of Cathay's negotiators hinted on his way into the meeting that the airline would ask for the vote to be abandoned.

"In the talks we will make every effort to help avoid this action, as this would be damaging for all our staff, our customers, the public and Hong Kong's international status," director of personnel William Chau Siu-chung said. "We will do our best to prevent this from happening."

The pilots' want pay rises and a new roster system they say will improve their health and family life. They also accuse Cathay of mismanagement, a claim the company dismisses.

The union's 1,200 members will vote tomorrow morning at the Mariners' Club in Tsim Sha Tsui, but their industrial action is not due to begin until July 1.

If an agreement is not reached, the pilots have threatened to disrupt flights in a way that will damage Hong Kong's efforts to establish itself as "Asia's world city". The action is to run indefinitely, until demands are met.

Their tactics are being kept secret, but are understood to include a go-slow and restrictions on which pilots land planes, so that many aircraft would quickly become ineligible to fly.

Yesterday's meeting was held with three Labour Department officers acting as conciliators. A 1999 dispute between Cathay and its pilots, which began when Cathay demanded most senior pilots take pay cuts in return for stock options, was resolved with the help of the department.

During that dispute, about 1,000 flights were cancelled. Cathay leased crewed planes from rival carriers to cover some of the lost flights, as its own pilots phoned in sick en masse saying they were too stressed to fly safely.