Khazanah and MAS middle management duped staff

In August last year, Tan Sri Azman Mokhtar said the MAS recovery plan is not a bailout but unfortunately, it is a payout to some and con job on the many.

One cabin crew shared an experience last year where Amokh was on board MAS. The cabin crew in the business class expressed concern for their future and job.

He said cabin crew have nothing to worry. The key area of the airline namely cabin crew, pilot and engineering would remain.

He lied on that one. All are affected.

The biggest lie he did was when he dissolved the MAS-Air Asia collaboration that was seen by MAS staff as heavily in favour of Air Asia.

If not directly affecting MAS nagatively, it served to safeguard CIMB loans to Air Asia.

Not only he let in Air Asia people inside the management of engineering, finance, and planning, he quietly left behind an important Air Asia person in the form of Zaharah Zaid. She is the chicken dancing, cookie monster Human Resource Director.

How convenient it is for Air Asia to express willingness to do joint engineering with MAS and take in MAS's terminated cabin crew.

Tan Sri Tony Fernandez does not need to spend money to train but he managed to get the MAS's trademark Malaysian Hospitality (MH) for free.

It smells of the old cancelled collaboration still being implemented. Already many realised that the MAS Recovery Plan is the same hodge podge plan implemented since 2001 but kept failed miserably.

Case in point is the obsession with out-sourcing which does not tally with keeping cost down. It shows Khazanah planner have no new idea and lack creativity to turnaround MAS. 

MH the hospitality and the abbreviation will be changed and lost too.

All these years MH had been the competitive advantage over the other airlines. Khazanah is too dumb to understand that all airlines have similar equipments and airplane subject to affordability. It is the human factor that made the difference.

MAS will practically close down the training centre and the Kelana Jaya centre has been sold off. Maybe to be turned into a high priced condo. Isn't it productive for the economy?

All the good multi-certified trainers and course designers are let go.

While they kept those with no clue as to how to do training but are blindly loyal. They are likely to follow instruction to out source training to cronies.

It only increase operational cost, cost a bundle to rid off the good veteran trainer and is hardly concurrent with the new management mantra that every-inches-of cost-count to be a value airline.

This seemed to be the common happening that was heard in various places in MAS.

One Manager with a Masters from an Ivy League University was sent on gardening leave.

He is respected in his field that he could deliver a keynote speech in a conference in Singapore many years ago in front of scholars from all over the world.

MAS had all along been looking at cost but never at the revenue side. He had the solution but was by passed by his immediate superior who herself is intellectually inadequate to understand this genius. She had cold storaged him for thinking outside the box and refuse to succumbed to lost making herd mentality thinking.

One chap is a rather eccentric LAME in Engineering but globally respected was chop off.

Not only he is technically qualified and superior but he kept ungrading himself educationally. The last heard of him is that he was doing a doctorate in management.

He managed to get some management expose in managing overseas office but he will not fit the new management thinking set by Zaharah and justfied by Hay Consulting to listen and follow orders.

There are many more examples of poor judgement because of this old imbedded culture of cronyism.

For instance, one Manager was allowed to stay on despite being an absolute moron and incompetent. She started out as a managing a Department with 10 people.

Her poor people skill and punitive attitude  led to massive resignations and request for transfer that the last heard she was left with one staff.

Yet MAS kept such character.

Staff are saying that the whole exercise was not done objectively.

Hay is good at right sizing job to position and salary package. But the selection of who to retain and who to chuck out was not done objectively. It is based on who they like and who they didn't like.

It is only expected that those wanting to work did not get the job but in return those wanting to leave was not offered.

One example was of one lady that had dedicated and committed herself with MAS for more than 30 years.

She wanted to leave badly because the company had not appreciated her. There had not been an appreciation long service watch or at least a certificate for her 15th, 20th, 25th and even 30th year of service.

She was left in out in the last retrenchment exercise under Dato Idris Jala and now she was offered a 0.4 x her 30 years as severance pay plus an offer with more than RM1,000 pay cut.

If she refuse today, she gets nothing for her more than 30 years commitment. While those rejected for what ever reason are endowed handsomely.

She will have to slug out for many more years and tolerate the incompetent, indiscipline and lack of dedication Gen Y to get the same income those leavers get.

For someone with income more than RM2,000 there is no provision in the Employment Act and Industral Act for a certain stated severance payout. She loses out and the company will argue that at least she got something.

It is not stated but management is on a whispering campaign to the demotivated offered staff that they will get as much as those that was asked to leave on a 1.5 x no. of years of service. On top of that there is a set aside monthly bonus after serving time (like in a prison).

Put on paper la ...

It is really unfair and travesty of justice. At her age, why would they still want her? So that the punitive Manager and the Gen Y can enslave her?

Even the way the termination and offer letters by Mueller and Tan Sri Mohd Nor Yusof was worded, it was pathetic schoolgirl letter. The language was like a personal letter than an official one. This is the incompetence that are running MAS now and it is set to die.

Not sure whether the unions are aware, but the MAS Act was set to favour management.  It was announced in August last year, received the royal consent in December last year and gazetted in January this year. Fast track law which contains:

The intention is:

If the old MAS was liquidated and newco is totally separated entity, then all the severance package have to be consistent to all.

However, the newco is a "successor-in-title".

Note 25 (1) (a).

There is still a link between the past company and present newco so that enable them to offer certain staff 0.4 and certain staff at 1.5 at their ducking fancy.

On the other hand, everything in the old company should remain in the newco. They can't bust the union and they have to resot to being a co-op. The the law is clear that the newco cannot offer less favourable term.

Kesian for some of the staff that was getting RM2,800 per month salary. Suddenly, it is slashed down significantly to slightly more than RM2,000 or something to close to that.

They are not getting the large severance package that would enable them to have some money and start out in another job or small businesses. Now they have to accept a severely reduced salary that reduced them to abject poverty and need BR1M to survive.

Union talk a lot but oftenly lose their head and do something stupid.

They were silent when former Human Resource Minister Dato Dr Fong Chan Onn (maybe Tan Sri by now) amended the * Industrial Act to cap compensation in order to safeguard Chinaman employer. All the union including so-called union man and now PKR MPs, Abdullah Sani and Syed Syahrir kept quiet.

Do not think MAS Unions will ever be relevant but if they wish to try to be so, here is a room for them to challenge their employer legally. So please la, don't tell me NUFAM will the voice that will champion MAS staff?

* Correction 5.00 pm