Aeroflot Fat-Shames Employees, Cuts Pay

A Russian airline has been accused of fat-shaming its employees and offering them lower wages based on weight.

Russia’s largest airline, Aeroflot, is facing controversy about fat-shaming employees and docking their pay because of weight. Two female crewmembers took the company to court over the issue last year.

“We were all photographed en masse and measured – some were even weighed,” one of the crewmembers in the lawsuit, Evgenia Magurina said. “This was done under the pretext of company rebranding and ordering new uniforms for staff. My life changed in the middle of August.” She told the Guardian that “we have had our salary lowered due to our clothing size. We are allowed to fly, but our salary is lowered.”

The airline won both lawsuits, but in a press conference on Tuesday, appeared to admit that it was basing salary and routes on appearances.

“Aeroflot is a premium airline and part of the reason people pay for tickets is the appearance of its employees,” Pavel Danilin, part of the airline’s public council, said in the conference. “Ninety-two percent want to see stewardesses who fit into the clothes sizes we are talking about here.”

According to the lawsuits, anyone over a Russian size 48 (about a size 12 in U.S. sizes) had their pay docked. Another member of the airline’s public council, Nikita Krichevsky, called the lower salary just an incentive to lose weight, and told affected employees to resign if they don’t like the policy.

“I myself used to weigh 103kg, and now I weigh 80kg,” he said in the conference. “I just corrected my eating habits and lost weight. I don’t understand why the request to be a particular size is unrealistic.”

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