tris06

CI management needs to step up and resist these demands.All airlines fly red eye flights. It is not exactly abnormal for your job to be at anytime of the day or evening. While it may cause short term issues CI should not budge with this demand. Get real staff living in your own fantasy. Just like the complaint maybe 1 week ago that the end of year bonus was not X4 times their salary like EVA gave its staff. Umm Eva Air staff get far lower pay and yet they happily did not mention that. Also their was a comment from some organisation maybe government department, that now CI was making a profit ( a long time they were break even or losing money) they should more generously give those profits to the staff. Again what kind of world these people are in? If CI was swimming in cash from a decade plus of healthy profits I think okay fair point to a certain extent. How about CI needing to save up some money for a rainy day.... or prep cash aside for future investments in new aircraft and etc. Also this company is listed on the Taiwan stock market, How sad for those shareholders (not fully owned by the government only partially) to see their investments not return any dividend for the past decade see staff get a generous increase in their salaries and other allowances and still complain that the airline does not dole out more profits to them instead of going to investors or allowing management more options to improve the long term services to passengers.

As you can see this pisses me off as I saw it all happen to Qantas in my home country about 9 years ago when people were demanding more from a company that could not handle demands on it. Thankfully management shut operations down completely and pushed the unions to be more reasonable. Since then no disputes causing strikes as the workers know management has some backbone.

hayzel7773

Unfortunately, the union is taking advantage of the ~70% share of the government. With the supermajority and full board control, the small-time shareholders have no chance. CI mgmt. has also been extremely aggressive in anti-union tactics that have ruffled feathers and have only caused greater outrage (screams government bullying the commoners). BR is a private and reasonable company and will not fold to nonsense complaints. CI mgmt. cannot really grow a backbone because it will look like the government bullying the commoners again. Apparently, CI started to cut down the ground staff numbers and they feel overloaded with only 2 people working wide body ops. FA's feel disrespected, pilots feel mgmt. gave the moon to the FA's but they don't get anything, no one is happy. It's terrible.

The Ministry of Transportation and Communication (MOTC) Secretary was the one who came out and said the employees deserve better (they are buying votes here). Following the comment, a salary increase of 2% was made and increase in year-end bonus. No word on what the charge will be for this, though for year-end bonus, they are taking another 7% charge on their 2018 profits (IIRC original board plan had 20% allocated to employees).

coolfish1103

They can continue whatever they want. I have voted my wallet somewhere else and have avoided both CI and BR unless it's a short haul or a free ticket.

tris06

Coolfish I agree I think it is going in that direction. I hope not but suspect this is not going to go away. The government should just privatise the business allow them to float or sink. I started questioning about continuing to fly with CI a while now. We'll see how I feel after the next 2-3 long haul flights this year.

bzcat

The fundamental issue is the extreme low wage and poor working conditions in Tawian compare to other OPEC/developed countries with similar GDP. It's just that the airline sector is one of the few in Taiwan that have independent unions so the employees can fight back. It's also a service industry so the jobs cannot be offshored to China, which was the basically the official industrial policy of Taiwan Govt for a very long time.

hayzel7773

First off, TW is not an oil producing country.

The airline industry workers are some of the most well-paid jobs on the market (albeit the ground handling is not as "sexy"). FA work can easily be farmed out to foreigners like Filipinos, Vietnamese, and Thais if they really need to (BR already kind of does this).

bzcat

I mean OECD not OPEC... that was a bad typo.

And BR does have lots of Southeast Asian FA but that's because BR fliers a lot of passengers who doens't speak Mandarin or English. So it's out of necessity not cost. Deadheading FAs from BKK or SGN to TPE is not cheap nor is paying for hotel at TPE for foreign based crew. Those are not practical solutions for an airline hubbed in TPE.

The fact that airline employees are paid higher wage than other industry is exactly the problem I noted. Taiwan's prevailing wage is too low, which is one of the major economic problem facing the country. Young people in Taiwan often have to leave the country to find reasonable paying job. The only sectors in Taiwan paying wages competitive with other developed countries are the ones that have independent unions or have to compete with foreign firms (i.e. professional services like accounting or consulting firms)

hayzel7773

Southeast Asian FA's do not deadhead. They work flights from their home country and are housed in TPE company dorms. They work flights to every single destination, whereas Japan FA's only work Japan routes (because they are ex). They SEA FA's are very cheap compared to the local Taiwanese ones and they cannot have union representation (+ for Mgmt.).

Yes, Taiwan wage is low but you follow local pay scales unless you are hiring foreigners.

tris06

Seems from next month CI will change amenity kits. I think its the 4th change over the past 6 years.

Branded "The north face" which I suppose is meant to compete with BR as they have branded amenity kits.

https://www.businesstraveller.com/business-travel/2019/01/29/china-airlines-unveils-new-the-north-face-amenity-kits/

coolfish1103

Their wage is now low, but they will tell you the American FAs are paid much higher (discounting the fact these generally start from regional airlines where being in BR/CI does not have to).

Compare to the economy in Taiwan for the rest of the paid jobs in service industry, the airline employees (except those on the ground) are generously paid.

hayzel7773

Sounds like they are just grasping at straws here.

BR keeps changing brands as well, except for Rimowa.

lolstebbo

Damn, I like these kit bags. I wouldn't have expected them to do something like this given how underwhelming the T2 lounge renovations went and considering how they've cut back on a lot of service items over the past six years, but it's funky.

coolfish1103

I'll get one on my return trip, but it looks poorly designed.

Zorak

It feels like a weird brand to associate with too -- IMO it doesn't connote luxury or premium etc. or have any particular cachet -- is there some Taiwan connection with the company?

It looks like it might be useful to repurpose for holding stuff though, so I'd certainly take one

tris06

Personally I think the current amenity is okay. I wouldn't say it is an improvement just different. I also miss the old days when using the old first class lounges. Coolfish can you tell me there was a favourite kind of dumpling I loved to eat in the lounge until 3-4 yrs ago they dumped it seemed everyone use to order it. It was like a very large dumpling which was partially see through.