Mr. John Slosar
Chairman. Cathay Pacific
2nd September 2017
Dear Mr. Slosar
We are writing to express our concern on the practice of age discrimination against flight attendants by your Company. This is both against international human rights standard and Hong
Kong Government Policy as reflected in the Labour Department Guidelines. Further, when the whole Hong Kong society was very much concerned about the ageing problems and want to encourage the employment of older workers and women workers, your Company practices age discrimination causing hardship to your forced retired employees and also the employment opportunity of older workers. The Chief Secretary of the last administration and the present Hong Kong Chief Executive, Ms. Carrie Lam, headed the Steering Committee on Population Policy and stated in its report: by enhancing support in child care, employment and other services, we hope to remove the barrier for women and the elderly to enter or stay in employment. The Cathay Pacific retirement age policy go in the other direction of creating barriers for older workers and indirectly many women workers.
Your Company had also misled the Hong Kong public and international investors. Cathay Pacific contradicts its own written statement of non–discrimination practice blatant age discrimination policy. To quote the CX sustainability report 2016:
As a major employer which supports Hong Kong, we endeavour to demonstrate good corporate citizenship. We provide equal opportunities to individuals regardless of gender, race, national or ethnic origin, religion, cultural background, social group, disability, marital status, family status,
sexual orientation, age or political opinion.
In actual practice, the Cathay Pacific practices blatant age discrimination policy forcing cabin crews to retire at the age of 55.Further, the imposition of mandatory retirement age also affects recruitment policy and employment opportunity of workers near the Company retirement age.
Cathay Pacific may argue that they are now consulting the cabin crews and would change the policy if 50% of crews vote for retirement age at 60. As you can see, the bar is very high when some crews may not even bother to vote. It is also unacceptable when compliance with human
rights and non discrimination is subjected to voting by employees.
We urged the Cathay Pacific to stop its policy of age discrimination and extend the retirement age to at least 60 years old.
Yours Sincerely,
Hui Chi Fung,Wong Pik Wan, Wu Chi Wai, Andrew Wan, Lam Cheuk Ting ,James To, Kwong Chun Yu, Tanya Chan, Jeremy Tam, Kwok Ka Ki, Alvin Yeung, Dennis Kwok, Charles Mok, Yip Kin Yuen, Lee Kwok Lun, Shiu Ka Chun,Claudia Mo, Leung Yiu Chung Fernando Cheung ,Chu Hoi Dick, Chan Chi Chuen