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Malaysia Airlines’ (MAS) leadership is to blame for the national carrier’s dire financial straits, and the unions representing it have been its biggest victims, the National Union of Bank Employees (NUBE) said today.
“Over a period of a few decades, huge amounts of public funds had been expanded to save MAS from corporate failure. Each time, there is a promise of a brighter tomorrow, with the only predictable outcome being that the public have been disappointed time and again.
“Changes in management personnel as well as the many ‘turnaround’ initiatives have failed. It only goes to point to a gross incompetence of the leadership of MAS, where the public and the workers have borne the brunt,” NUBE general-secretary J. Solomon said in a statement today.
He was responding to a statement by think tank the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) that MAS unions’ resistance to change had prevented MAS from turning into a profitable company.
Its chief, Wan Saiful Wan Jan, said on Sunday that the unions were too influential and vocal, and had blocked any attempts to reform the airline.
“IDEAS could be more responsible in collating facts when engaging with all relevant stakeholders rather than training their guns at the unions by absolving the weaknesses of corporations,” said Solomon today.
“It is the workers which are the engine of MAS, and their efforts have been in vain.”
He said MAS workers had helped the national airline win many international awards for its quality of service.
“Service quality is a critical factor in the success of any airline, and MAS has always come up trumps in that area. What has been lacking and which caused the failure of MAS is simply incompetent leadership and financial management,” said Solomon.
“The key to any successful venture is to respect the rights of people, and in the case of corporations, rights of workers and trade unions.
“MAS has failed in this aspect and many others, and the workers and trade unions should not be unfairly blamed and instead engaged more actively to see to a successful turnaround of the national carrier.”
However, Wan Saiful is not alone in thinking MAS unions should be blamed for the airline’s predicament.
On June 15, Kepong MP Dr Tan Seng Giaw also accused MAS unions of being a stumbling block to overhauling the ailing airline with their “unreasonable” demands and threats.
“As the unions have been long established, they have been making incredible demands. If we have unions that don’t understand the airline industry today, MAS cannot survive,” said Tan, who is deputy chairman of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
Meanwhile, on May 16, the MAS Employee Union of Peninsular Malaysia (Maseu) urged Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to carry out a restructuring programme of the airline’s top management, just hours after Najib said that it might be too late to save the struggling national flag carrier.
Maseu threatened to strike if the airline did not remove the existing top management whom it accused of being incompetent.
The union was also against plans to restructure MAS, including the sale of its engineering division and other non-core businesses.
MAS reported losses of RM443.4 million in the first quarter of the year, from a net loss of RM278.8 million in the same period last year. Losses in 2013 amounted to RM1.17 billion.
MAS said that the Q1 loss was due to missing flight MH370, where it saw high numbers of cancellations and a decline in long-haul travel after March 8 incident.
Former Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein also said that Putrajaya would not rescue MAS following the airline’s dismal performance.
In 2011 and 2012, MAS’s unions also protested against a merger between the airline and AirAsia, a deal which was welcomed by many quarters as a fresh start for MAS. The deal, however, fell through in May 2012. – July 8, 2014.
Source: The Malaysia Insider
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