Hiring on radar for Cathay next year

Cathay Pacific said it has no plans to sack more staff and is considering hiring pilots and flight attendants again next year.

Cathay chairman Patrick Healy said staff members can see their salaries return to previous levels if they fly more and denied accusations of double standards with its pay cut packages for frontline staff and top management.

This came after Cathay axed its sister airline Cathay Dragon and fired 5,300 staff last month, asking employees to sign a new contract with permanent pay cuts.

Cathay chief executive Augustus Tang Kinwing told lawmakers in a Legislative Council joint panel yesterday the company plans to recruit pilots and will re-employ those laid off.

“We have plans to recruit new pilots. As far as cabin crew are concerned, taking into consideration the number of passengers and the time needed to recruit and train them, we expect to start recruiting flight attendants in the second half of next year,” Tang said.

Cathay does not need to ax more of its staff to stay afloat given that the aviation industry will recover as planned next year, Healy said.

“[If the aviation industry recovers towards the end of 2021], our liquidity position and balance sheet are certainly strong enough to take us through the crisis without the need for recapitalization and without the need for further retrenchment,” he said.

Lawmakers criticized Cathay for asking its employees to sign new contracts with permanent pay cuts, but only reducing its management’s pay for a year.

Democrat Andrew Wan Siu-kin said Cathay was “fattening the top at the expense of the bottom.”

“Cathay forced its staffers to sign a new contract, which will see their salaries capped permanently and become cheap labor, but the directors and senior management, receiving HK$50 million [per year], only have their remuneration capped for a year,” Wan said.

“Cathay also only allowed 14 days for its employees to consider signing the contract, which is actually forcing them to sign or else they will lose their job,” he added.

His party mate Lam Cheuk-ting hit out at Cathay for exploiting its workers despite receiving HK$27 billion in government subsidies.

But Healy brushed off claims of a double standard: “Given the current levels of flying, there is a reduction on average of 15 percent for cabin crew in their remuneration, but once flying returns to normal... then their remuneration will recover to its prior levels,” Healy said.

He added that the overall remuneration structure for the management will also be reviewed by then.

No politically appointed officials attended yesterday’s meeting.

The Cathay Pacific Flight Attendants Union was not invited either, despite their writing to panel chairman Michael Luk Chung-hung from the Federation of Trade Unions.

Luk refused to invite unionists, as he said the meeting discussed aviation industry policies rather than individual events.