Air NZ’s redundancy process ‘traumatic’

Air New Zealand is betraying its own brand by using ‘‘old school thinking’’ for a redundancy process which will result in thousands of job losses, a union representing cabin crew says.

Like most airlines around the world Air New Zealand has been hammered by the impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on air travel.

In late March the national carrier grounded more than half of its fleet and reduced its network capacity by 95 per cent in response to governments shutting their borders to stop the spread of Covid19 and customer demand falling away.

Around the same time chief executive Greg Foran indicated that in a year the company would be 30 per cent smaller, which could result in at least 3750 of its 12,500 staff being out of work.

Early last month the airline told staff it was planning to make up to 1460 cabin crew employees redundant.

Up to 300 Airbus A320 cabin crew jobs were going, along with up to 950 crew on the Boeing 787 and 777 widebody fleet.

The airline’s bill for crew wages was about $14 million a month.

E tu¯ union leader Savage said Air New Zealand’s ‘‘fast paced and heavy-handed’’ approach to down-sizing would cause damage to its workplace culture.

The airline was laying off workers with a belief that they could be re-hired at a later date, because that was the cheaper option, he said.

‘‘It is old school thinking,’’ Savage said.

E tu¯ union leader

This would come at a cost to employee sentiment and ultimately the brand, which was built on staff going above and beyond in their line of work, he said.

‘‘More and more flights will take off but the result of the changes they are enacting will be a disaffected and demoralised workforce far less inclined to go the extra mile.

‘‘The company used to be seen as a socially responsible employer but the way they are acting is betraying their own brand.’’

The company could go slower and be more strategic about redundancies as the situation changed, he said.

The scale of redundancies had been traumatic for staff, he said.

‘‘It has been made worse by the way Air New Zealand has acted to get rid of people before anyone can have face-toface meetings to discuss and challenge and make sense of it all.’’

Cabin crew were currently negotiating fair and transparent return to work criteria and ensuring exiting crew had support in place as they pursued careers outside of aviation, he said.

The airline was planning to ground its 777 fleet for a year, he said, which presented a particularly difficult situation for the airline’s 787-9 crew, which faced the prospect of being replaced by their colleagues who crew 777s.

An Air New Zealand spokeswoman said a reduction in the number of cabin crew had been proposed across all fleets.

These would follow redundancy provisions and selection criteria set out in collective employment agreements for each cabin crew fleet, she said.

‘‘We have no further comment to make while consultation is under way.’’

‘‘The company used to be seen as a socially responsible employer but the way they are acting is betraying their own brand.’’ Savage