Sometimes, it's a lot nicer just to KISS

 (keep it simple, stupid)

Here's good, old fashioned text from the VCDs

Best regards - Nigel Demery

Presidential Election 2002

Hi everybody, I’m Nigel Demery.

As you’ve probably guessed by now, we’re all doing videos. I’m sure you’ve probably had enough of my ugly mug on VCDs before. What I’d like to do this afternoon is to tell you why I’d like you to vote for me for a third term of  the Presidency.

The Contract

What I’ve got here is a whole bunch of paperwork. These are my contracts since I joined Cathay. Half of you have probably never even seen this one at the back. That’s the old A Scale “Blue Book”, as it’s called. All of these are the contracts that I’ve had between 1993 and 1997. This is the one that we’re on now. There’s one issue that’s fundamental to all of us, and that’s why I’ve decided that I think I need to stick it out and run for a third term, because our contract is being abused and we have to stop it.

What we have to decide is, are we on a career airline contract or are we on a contract that, at the moment, is only about 3 months long? Absolutely everything that has gone down in the last 7 or 8 years has all been about our contract.

Some of you may think that what’s going on at the moment is about personalities, it’s about Nigel Demery versus senior management. That’s not true. Our management team, in 1993, changed and they started going about it the professional way. What we have to do, as a group of professional pilots, is we’ve got to decide that we’re going to go about it professionally as well. That’s why we have to sort our contract out.

The prime reason why I’m standing again is because I’m absolutely committed to getting all of The 49ers their jobs back. I’ve been wearing this ribbon now for about 330 days. I put it on every day and I take it off when I go to bed at night. But the reason I’m doing that is not just for 50 guys who were unfairly terminated. The reason I’m doing that is because you and your family need more than 3 months if you’re going to be a professional pilot.

You need a career and it’s a career that we must get together.

Appeasement??

There are those that will also say that "it’s time to change direction, it’s time to change and do something else, it’s time to get back on the right track" – whatever the right track is.

Can I just remind you, please, that since 1994, when we were done over then, we have been trying to re-engage with management, we have been trying to sort our contract out in the least confrontational terms possible. That was our choice. As sentient human beings it was also the logical thing to do. What we have found to our cost is that this management – they want to knock this contract away – so that they can run the business on the most profitable, most flexible terms. There is no point in us going back 3 or 5 years in the time frame and starting trying to be "nice" to management. It’s not about being "nice", it’s about striking a deal.

Not Alone

We’re not alone in this. This is a copy of the FAU Agreements, signed between 1984 and it goes up to 1997. They haven’t had any since. The FAU are struggling hard just to keep their head above water at the moment. Their General Managers won’t even talk to them anymore. That’s the way we’re going to go unless we get used to it and get stuck into it in a professional manner. We’re not the only pilot group that going along this. Within the oneworld™ alliance alone, the Lan Chile pilots have been bust because they faced a vicious onslaught; they had a go at the Iberian pilots and most recently the Irish pilots.

What we have to decide as an Association is are we going to finish the job that we started – to treat our contract in a mature and sensible fashion.

What Now? 

So having “gone around” last October, what are the options open to us now? We’re "in the hold", we’ve been there for 7 or 8 months. We haven’t just been doing nothing. Your Association, your Committee in particular, have been working very hard to ensure that we are well placed for the future.

We can stay in the hold – I suspect that not many of us want to do that.

We can go back from whence we started – I suggest that that wouldn’t be a particularly smart move either and it would waste all the work and effort that we’ve put in over the last 6 or 7 years.

So a vote for me will be a vote for "shooting another approach". What does that mean to me? What does that mean to you and to your family?

When we shoot another approach, what we’re saying is we’re going to continue as a mature and unified Association to go for the goal. And the goal is, as I’ve already said several times – the contract, the career.

When we do that we’re not going to suddenly rush off and start strike action or whatever you’ve been told. We’re going to continue in the same consistent, thoughtful, open way that we were doing last year. What we’re going to be doing is doing what you, the Members, are prepared to do to achieve the goal.

Proven Strategy

Some may need reminding what is our strategy? Our strategy for the last 6 years has been based on the multi-path approach. What does the multi-path mean to you and me? The multi-path means that we’re going to continue with the legal actions, we're going to continue with the PR, we're going to continue with industrial action in whatever form is comfortable to the Members. In other words, we’re going to continue applying small amounts of pressure to the Company until they realise that the best business decision, what’s best for Cathay Pacific Airways – our airline - what’s best is just to do a deal with the pilots that includes the contract.

This is not about kowtowing to your employees. This is about doing it in a business fashion.

The Legals

Let’s just briefly mention the Legals.

With the benefit of hindsight, I think that this last 8 months of going around the hold will be beneficial for us because we’ve got a lot closer to finalizing some of the legal solutions than we expected. They took longer than we’d hoped for.

Look at the Rostering for example. The rostering cases, there are two, are now imminent. How much longer can Cathay Pacific Airways management go on breaching their pilots’ rostering terms in their contract?

Summary

I know some of you are very tired. I have to say that I’m not as fresh as I was when I started 2 years ago. Tiredness is normal. What we’re concentrating on is seeing the job through to a successful conclusion. Our multi-path strategy will see us through to that conclusion IF we stick with it and do the job.

In summary, I’m asking for your vote because I genuinely believe that we all need a fair, reasonable contract. If you vote for me, a vote for me will be saying: 

• Yes, I want to see the job through
• Yes, management, you deal with our elected leaders
• Yes, management, we want to be Cathay Pacific Airways pilots, who are some of the best

BUT you treat us as is only fair.

Thank you.

Nigel Demery

June 2002