E tū union criticizes Air New Zealand for eliminating hundreds of cabin crew jobs

A union has criticized new staff cuts at Air New Zealand as “appalling” at the company that has received hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money this year.

Air New Zealand today confirmed the loss of 385 cabin crew functions that had been under review for the past two months.

E tū Aviation Chief Savage said international cabin crews from the 777 and 787 fleets have been hit the hardest by the layoffs at Air New Zealand, with 85 percent of them losing their jobs.

About 4,400 jobs have been announced since the beginning of the year. The airline has received about $ 150 million in salary and transportation subsidies this year and has begun using a $ 900 million loan, on which it is paying interest of between 7% and 9%.

Savage said it had warned in March that Air New Zealand was making good progress regardless of the damage it could cause to labor relations.

“The damage and the conflict created will simply make it difficult to rebuild the airline.”

The 787 team will lose their jobs just before Christmas and the 777 team without permission lost their jobs in July.

Savage said hundreds of crew members opted for the company’s leave plan in which, instead of collecting severance pay, they went on leave without pay in the hope that when the flight was restarted, they would be able to return and recover. some employment benefits.

“Due to the scale of the company cuts, some crew members on leave may now lose any hope of returning to work.”

Savage said that E tū had proposed using an extended license without payment options and extending existing re-employment clauses as possible solutions, but the talks so far have not led to any agreement.

” Confidence between cabin crew employees and Air New Zealand is at an all-time low due to those 2013 attempts to lower terms and conditions, and subsequent attempts to lower crew work standards ” .

When Covid struck, the 787’s crew were considering possible strike action after lengthy negotiations failed to address their low wages.

“The crew of E tū will do what they can to find a solution, but it may be the case that the license plan for the 787 crew does not survive the worsening of the global pandemic.”

The airline said today that it had also decided to close a license agreement with 550 international cabin crew. These job losses had been included in the totals published earlier this year.

The airline’s chief operating officer, Carrie Hurihanganui, said the airline’s international hours remained largely limited by border restrictions.

“Unfortunately, there are not enough flights to provide sustainable rosters for the number of international cabin crew we have.”

He said the consultation with the crew has now been completed and that the airline would go ahead with the reduction of around 385 full-time equivalent roles.

Due to the terms of two different collective agreements for the international widebody crew, in order to solve those layoffs, it has now had to close a licensing agreement with around 550 international cabin crew who finished working on the business in July.

“We are working closely with our unions to see if there is a different way that we can provide this crew with a way back to Air New Zealand,” Hurihanganui said.

Unions have been concerned about the firing of airline personnel and the use of Shanghai-based crews.

He said the Shanghai crew base was contracted by Air New Zealand through Foreign Airlines Service Corporation (FASCO), which is a government agency in China.

” It is a requirement of the Chinese authorities that Chinese citizens be recruited through this organization. However, Air New Zealand regards and has always treated this crew as Air New Zealand. ”

None of the 58 Shanghai-based crew members were currently operating after being laid off in February.

The New Zealand-based cabin crew currently operated limited flights to Shanghai. “

Air New Zealand reported an underlying loss of $ 87 million for fiscal 2020, compared to earnings of $ 387 million last year.

Covid-19 has eliminated its first half result and pretax statutory losses, which include $ 541 million of other major items, were $ 628 million, compared to last year’s $ 382 million profit.

The after-tax loss was $ 454 million.

The airline has benefited from wage subsidy payments of $ 75 million through the end of June and another $ 40 million since then. It has been paid $ 21 million from the government’s transportation subsidy plan that runs through the end of the year and has supported more than 250 charters.

The International Air Transport Association says airlines can’t cut costs fast enough to cover a significant cash burn to avoid bankruptcies and preserve jobs next year.

Total industry revenue in 2021 is expected to decline 46% compared to the 2019 figure of $ 838 billion (NZ $ 1.2 trillion), according to the International Air Transport Association.

This is a much bleaker outlook than it was at the beginning of the year, when revenue was estimated to be down about 29 percent compared to last year.

This was based on expectations of a recovery in demand in the fourth quarter of this year, but a resurgence of Covid-19 in the second and third waves around the world has slowed air travel.

The association expects full-year 2020 traffic to decline 66 percent compared to last year.