Didn't I warn you strike might be coming? And you put TWO IMPORTANT clients on CX with you :confused:

Umm...this doesn't sound too good...Hope they can sort this all out as I am also flying out on the 9th.....

For those who said they have no sympathy for the cabin crew or that they think there is nothing wrong with the no swaping for <70 hours polcy, you guys probably do not understand the background of the issue.

Before 97, CX cabin crew are usually monthly salary crew who has a fixed monthly flying hours and anything over that amount will be consider over time. CX want to cut over time cost, by introducing hourly pay crew, in effect, there will be no over time payment, crew will be pay according to the hours flown but with a minimum of 70 hours pay. This has work well for CX on their cost cutting point of view but it greatly reduce CX cabin crew pay above as there are no more over time. Now 13 years later, CX notice that they are paying duplicate work because some cabin crew decided to work less than 70 hours and yet recieve 70 hours pay, while others who work more than 70 hours are costing the company extra money. However, this is all within the contract that was initially drafted by CX because they want to cut cost. This time around, they want to change the contract that they imposed on all new CX cabin crew because they saw this so call loophole... However for CX cabin crew who are sign onto this contract, this is not a loophole at all, this is their contractual right! So in effect, CX is unilaterally trying to change someone contract to cut cost... So what happen is that the Flight Attendent union simply ask, CX to return to the old montly salary crew contract and then this swaping below 70 hours will not be an issue... You see what people from the outside do not understand is that CX are the one who created this mess... Cabin Crew has never ask to have hourly contract, but CX thought they could cut cost so that's why they introduce it... Now it is just another cost cutting measure by CX... If hourly crew was never introduced 13 years ago, this problem will have never exisiting in the first place... So CX can blame their cabin crew all they want but CX management are the one who created this mess in the first place and they are the one who has created this loophole by offering hourly crew so they should suffer their consequences and they should not be allow to change the rule once again!

As for overseas based crew operating long haul flight... The reason why HK based crew are complaining is because the average HK based crew makes avout 12K including allowance... Without allowance, at 70 hours at $90 to $110 an hour, a HK base crew salary will drop to $7000 to $8000 a month... Which makes it very difficult to live in HK especially when considering the cost of transportation to go to work at the airport... So this is why CX hong kong based crew are complaining...

CX is very good at bending the truth... So a lot of the stuff is not really what they seem and the flight Attendent definitily has their reason on why they might go on stike!

Finally for those who are wondering what does 70 hours per month means...
Some people claim the clock on time starts 2 or 3 hours before a flight... That is actually false... For the purpose of Flight Time Limitation and Rest Requirements, the duty start time does indeed start 1:30 before departure... And until 30 mins after engine shutdown... However for the purpose of PAY/Salary... The actually salary clock starts at Engine Start until Engine Shutdown... So any delay it is not pay... This is another way CX cheat (cost cut) their employee... This same formula apply to both Cabin Crew and Cockpit crew... So in reality, 70 hours a month actually means working for a lot more than 70 hours... In some cases, depending on the pattern or if there are a lot of turn around flight... 70 hours could equal to 120 to 140 hours of work on the airplane... A goo example will be a Taipei turn around... Cabin Crew get pay for 2 hours (1 hour flight time there and back), but they will start work 1:30 before departure... Turn the aircraft around during the 2 hours ground time in Taipei and then pax deboarding and afterland check... So for 2 hours pay, but cabin crew actually worked for 6 hours... I hope people will now get the point and understand the cabin crew frustration...

Let me say, I do have sympathy for the FAs overall.

But it doesn't make sense to revisit something that was in place 13 years ago - the world was a different place then. Indeed, 13 years ago, Hong Kong was still under British rule - how about we also go back to that?

So, the most productive thing is to see where things are now, and move forward, based on current circumstances.

What are your recommendations that cut costs/increase profits for CX, and also allows FAs more flexibility?

I understand it does not makes sense to talk about something that was already in place for 13 years... however, I do believe in a certain fairness and this should apply to both the company point of view and employee point of view.

If CX believe it is cost effective for them to have Hourly Pay Crew, than they should live with the consequence that a small percentage of staff who might be able to take advantage of the swap rules when combines with the Hourly Pay Crew contract... Remember, the actual cost to the company are probably very small and the percentage of crew who are able to swap away 30 or 40 hours of their roster flight for a day off is even smaller... It is rather difficult to meet all the minimum rest requirements, to align with the particular days off and flight combination that is being swap... To find these flight combination, the cabin crew really need to look hard to find a proper match and a lot of the times, swap probably will not go through because not everyone want to work much more unless the flight is very attractive with a lot of outport allowance. So my personal view of this issue is that the implementation of this policy is probably a stupid idea from some General Manager who has the ideas to try to trim all the fat out of the system. The top management probably has never ask for such changes, as I am sure the top management at CX realize the cost benefit vs pissing off all the cabin crew is not worth their time, hence this loophole existed for 13 years without being fixed or even mention in the past 13 years... and this is probably the reason why such policy are dropped immediately once this issue hit the public domain and the Top Dogs at CX is asking the GM, what on earth are you doing? From looking at CX history, if something is approved by the top management at CX (from man-comm), it is rarely changed even though there are resistance within the employee group... so this particular instance, I am 90% certain that the ideas for this policy did not comes from the top but from some clueless middle management who doesn't understand the big picture.

At the end of the day, every contract has their advantages and disadvantages. The current Hourly crew contract allow CX to cut cost by having a lower over time cost to the company, this is advantages to the company during boom time, as over time is non-existence when compare to monthly salary crew. The disadvantages is that it allow some people to take advantage of the system by working less than 70 hours and yet receiving 70 hours of pay, and this particular issue is more pronounce during a downturn as it become easier to swap away flight when all the crew are working less hours (more chance for the swap to go through). However, as I explain from above, even now, only a small percentage of people who might be able to take advantage of this, and the actual overall cost to CX will be tremendously less than if everyone is on monthly salary and having CX to pay everyone overtime.

Anyway, you has ask what is the most productive things to do and move forward, based on the current circumstance... the most logical things is to leave things as it is... which is exact what CX is doing at the moment. However, what CX has done through this stupid maneuver is that they have stir up the emotion of the cabin crew and they are not going to give up until a lot of other issues are resolve as well. These issues has been building up for years.... and the recent swap policy change is simply just the trigger for other much bigger issue... this include Union recognition by CX, collective bargaining rights, no unilateral policy changes without consultation with FAU, base crew working on other oversea long haul flight, layover time for cabin crew (which impact their income due to out-port allowance), etc. So it looks like it is a rough road ahead for CX management.

Finally, you have ask "What are your recommendations that cut costs/increase profits for CX, and also allows FAs more flexibility?"... I personally do not know. However, my feeling is that for a lot of the CX front line staff, it has reach the breaking point in terms of cost cutting... most front line staff (cabin crew as well as cockpit crew) has not receive any meaningful pay increase since 1999, in fact, new cabin crew hourly pay package has been on the decrease years after years for the past 5 year or so (while their office counter part at CX has receive numerous pay increase over the last 10 years)... so further cost cutting is not going to happen without a flight from the FAU... if you look at CX cabin crew pay structure, it is already quite low compare to their European & American & Asian counterpart... A CX cabin crew pay is equivalent to regional cabin crew pay in the USA (heck, my friend who works as a FA at republic airways [a large regional carrier that do flight for a lot of the majors in USA, but they are known to pay peanuts to their staff], get pay more than your average CX cabin crew) and CX are about the same as the lower cost carrier cabin crew pay in Europe... So for CX to ask for more cost cutting from the cabin crew, I will ask is this a big joke? To be honest, I am surprise the cabin crew has not ask for a pay increase... Cost cutting plan has its limits, if it is overdone, staff become so disloyal that they just don't give a sh&^ about the company anymore... and I think for many of the front-line staff at CX, it has reaches that point... wait for more disruption and threats from the cockpit crew later this year... I smell something similar is coming from the cockpit crew at CX as well...

http://inews.mingpao.com/htm/INews/2...3/gb62056a.htm

Now the union refuse to have another meeting with CX. CX wants to meet with the union again tomorrow through the help of the labor department but the union refuse to attend. IMHO the union is not winning the PR war at all.

I have sympathy for all working people, anybody that works for a living deserves sympathy.

However, I do not have sympathy for union hard-nosed tactics. Talk with CX and work it out. CX has already retracted the enforcement of the new rules, and to me that's a sign of good faith negotiating. I do not see why union should go ballistic, threaten to strike, and may possibly strike as soon as the 8th, and then refuses to meet with CX management through the help of Labor Department.

I can see the issues: pay cut, harder to live, etc. But on the other hand, CX is also losing money. Unions should realize every cent they squeeze out of the company the company eventually will make cuts elsewhere to make up the differences. Cut quality, cut services, cut routes, etc. At the end, everybody loses.

Do not be like American Autoworkers Union where their resistance to negotiation on cuts ultimatley is the primary reason why American cars can never be competitive or profitable.

It is booked well in advance and also I did not realize CX Cabincrew unions are so strong-nosed. After CX retracted enforcement I thought things would cool off and die down a bit, but instead it seems the unions is going "All-in", forcing CX to make permanent that they won't change the new rules.

My wife called her friend to ask what's up, and she got an hour of her friend cursing out at CX management, LOL

:D In that case I am not going to ask my friends who work for CX the same question :p

What's not being communicated in these media reports is that every time the union made a request, the CX negotiation team called for a break and said they need to ask the upper management. Also, other issues the union wants to talk about, the CX team said this is not related and should not be discussed during the meetings. At the end, the union thinks the CX management just want to delay their actions and buy themselves some time. Didn't really want to negotiate with them at all and it's a waste of their time...that's the message I got from the deleted youtube video (I think there's a new one but I haven't watched it) and the facebook posts...

A lot of things are not told by the media, because as we all know, CX PR department has very good relationship with the media. Some sticking point issues include:
1) CX refusal to talk about other major issue beside the swaping rules, It is CX management refuseal to talk, yet the CX PR department was quoted for telling the media that all issue are resolve except for one issue, but all the flight Attendent know this is a lie and this is a rub in the face of the union.
2) CX claim they have drop the new swaping rule, however CX want the union to sign an agreement that stated that CX will not re-introduce the now cancelled swaping rules but the union will have to accept any new propsoal introduced by the company to fix the "so call" swaping loopholes (which to the flight Attendent this is not a loophole)... So the FA union pretty much goes, ..., on one hand CX say they will never re-introduce the swaping rules and at the same time, they want the FA union to sign agreement to accept any new rules introduce by the company over the exact same issue in the future??? This is call negotiating in good faith??? Do CX think their staff is stupid??? Just like JAL has said, CX does not want to negotiate, they just want to buy themselves sometime... So I completely agree with the FA union action... If CX is clearly not negotiating in good faith, then why bother, just teach them a lesson so that next time the management will know what negotiating in good faith really means!

Finally, I do live in Hong Kong, so for me I do not want to see a strike at CX, but CX is not know to be a company that co-operate and work with their employee group... I have heard somewhere that recently during one of CX lawsuit with their pilots, the presiding judge actually told the CX lawyer that, "CX has the most pending lawsuits from their employee group out of all companies in Hong Kong, so clearly there is something fundamentally wrong with the CX human resource department or there is something wrong with the way CX management treats their employee." I just thought that was very interesting when I hear that... This pretty much tell us how CX management operated and how they treat their staff... Just my two cents!

There's an easy way for the CX Cabin Crew to get back a lot of respect - make an undertaking agreeing that they will not get paid for more hours than they actually make themselves available for work. The fundamental problem as I see it is that a small number of staff were gaming the system and getting 70 hours money for 40 hours work.

Maybe it is just me. I still don't see the problem of CX management tightening the policy. The "potential" problem is how it is communicated, negotiated, and carried out.

Cutting cost is common across ALL airlines. The glamorous days of flying were long gone. The cost-cutting pressure the crews face is the same across the ENTIRE industry. Example, FAs around the world have been getting paid from the moment the door is closed till the engine is shutted. CX is NO exception. Why would people make a scene of it? Remember - all contracts are agreed to, or anyone one can walk out of the job or get eliminated anyhow. They are at will.

Again, as I previously commented already, I, as a CX long-haul pax several times a year, do NOT want to pay for a ticket price that covers those who swap all those hours away, stay home, and receive the minimum 70 hours of pay. Do I get to stay home and get that kind of pay? I hope so, too, but my clients will flat out walk away. I work overtime (as a service-oriented professional) and do NOT even get overtime! It was that way in the historic past does NOT mean it has to be the same way in the future when LCCs are happily taking CX's pax away everyday and charging a lower ticket price that cover ONLY those who work the flights.

There are MANY points in the last several posts that are debatable. I am quite surprised many have been silent thus far.

good thing I am flying back to Shanghai via Shenzhen...