New China Airlines chairman Ho Nuan-hsuan (何煖軒) and an Executive Yuan official yesterday criticized former company president Chang Yu-hern (張有恆) for refusing to accept a Cabinet suggestion to make concessions to flight attendants, and accused him of refusing to answer his telephone calls.
Ho told a news conference yesterday that Chang had refused a request to immediately drop company requirements that flight attendants report to work at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport late on Thursday night following the announcement of the strike.
“I sent him a text message at 6:31pm asking him to address the matter in accordance with the results of my talks with the Executive Yuan, but he did not accept what I told him,” Ho said. “In addition, when I called him, he did not pick up and also did not return my call. He did not even let me know the results of the firm’s internal meeting on addressing the strike.”
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei
Separately yesterday, a Cabinet official speaking on condition of anonymity said that if Chang had accepted Ho’s suggestion events might have unfolded differently.
The official said Premier Lin Chuan (林全) had asked the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications to request that China Airlines negotiate with the Taoyuan Flight Attendants Union and be prepared to make concessions, “but both the [China Airlines] chairman and president were appointed by the previous government” and they “refused to listen.”
“After a few attempts [by Ho] to contact Chang, he stopped answering the telephone, including telephone calls from [Minister of Transportation and Communications] Hochen Tan (賀陳旦),” the official said, adding that the Executive Yuan released the news that Ho would be taking over as chairman to show its discontent with Chang.
“If Chang had accepted Ho’s suggestions, things might have turned out differently,” the official said, adding that besides the chairman and president, all of the management team at China Airlines would be replaced.
When asked why the new government waited more than a month after its inauguration to replace the management team at China Airlines, the official said the administration needed time to find suitable candidates, adding that if the management team had not caused a controversy the new appointments could have come even later.
The New Power Party (NPP) yesterday called for the management team at China Airlines to be replaced and for former officials be held accountable for the financial losses caused as a result of the strike.
“The firm’s entire management team is rotten to the core,” NPP Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said, adding that travelers should not blame union members for flight cancelations, as the strike was forced on the them by the company and would help further the rights of all workers.
Huang said he canceled plans to accompany President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on her first overseas trip to “stand together” with the flight attendants.
While Ho met with flight attendants demonstrating in front of China Airlines’ headquarters in Taipei, a small group of the airline’s flight attendants, mostly from Kaohsiung, staged another demonstration outside the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) headquarters in the capital.
“The new chairman said he would cancel the requirement for flight attendants to report to work in Taoyuan, but that was only agreeing to a precondition for further negotiations,” said Yao Kuang-chu (姚光祖), secretary-general of the Taoyuan Confederation of Trade Unions, which helped organize the strike. “We would only call it a ‘negotiation’ when China Airlines talks about the seven major demands we raised.”
Yao said that while the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) should take most of the blame for the strike, the DPP is also partly responsible as the ruling party.
Lin Pin-chun (林品君), a China Airlines flight attendant, said Kaohsiung-based flight crews were threatened with penalties for taking part in the strike, as it was organized by the Taoyuan Flight Attendants Union.
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