“We put our heart to the company, but they did not treasure it,” said a Cathay Pacific worker

25 Oct, 2020

Hong Kong - After the massive lay-offs of Cathay Pacific and the immediate shutdown of Cathay Dragon, retained personnel struggled on signing a new permanent contract with reduced salaries and welfares.

“I’m lucky that I still secured a job,” said Emma, a flight attendant in Cathay Pacific. “But I am not very happy about how the company treat us, forced us, even almost threatened us to give consensus to the new unfair contract which would reduce 50% of my salary.”

According to the contract provided by Emma, swapping in a flight is still existed, but with the condition of “if the flight was cancelled, your total hours flown will still be adjusted.”

If Emma originally got a 78-hour monthly schedule, after Emma swap another turnaround of 5 hours, Emma will be expected to do 83 hours in a month. However, once the flight canceled, Emma’s credit hours would be minus 5 swapped-hours to 73 hours, which subtracts from her original worked hours.

Controversy also stirred among airways staffs with doubts of monthly pay deduction in a 4-day-less sick leave, and a high-priced medical plan benefits.

Cathay Pacific stated that they had enough crew members of all ranks who had signed the contracts, which is enough to maintain flight operations of 2021.

The retained crew members had to sign the permanent contract before 4 Nov, or they will be terminated, which means they will be disqualified by the company forever.

“Of course they want to cut money,” said Kandi Kwan, another flight attendant who has been working in Cathay Pacific for almost 6 years. “But why are our new contracts permanent, not in a short term?”

Cathay Pacific launched an online consultation for their employees, but Kwan and Emma said the Cathay Pacific did not directly answer the questions. “They just tell us to go straight to our own handbooks,” said Kwan.

Cathay Pacific responded that they would not have any consensus with Staff Union because they cannot change any terms of the new contract during such a hard time. The Union will hold an urgent online meeting on 26 Oct.

Cathay Pacific laid off 8500 positions worldwide, which included about 2000 flight attendants on 21 Oct. Cathay Dragon is immediately shut down.

“They could have been more humane,” said Vanessa Li Hoi-Ching, who is a Cathay Pacific flight attendant who got fired from the job cuts. “I was first notified by everything just disappeared from my phone, but not receiving an official email.”

“I was at sleep the moment Cathay Pacific announces the close down of Cathay Dragon,” said Olivia, who was a business-class flight attendant in Cathay Dragon. “My company’s app is gone. Our company blocked our email function so we can’t send email to make things clear.”

“Like 24/7, there are lots of people. Especially, there is a lot of KA (Cathay Dragon) flights in the morning,” said Emma. “But now this scene is like never seen. Whenever you go to Cathay City, it just like at a midnight.”