This was the question posed by Ismail Nasaruddin, president of the National Union of Flight Attendants Malaysia (Nufam), who said MAS’ outgoing CEO Christoph Mueller had acted unfairly by accusing the airline’s employees of sleeping on the job.
“Some of the terminated employees served and sacrificed for the airlines for decades, longer than Mueller had been in the industry.
“If the reason for the downsizing was due to his belief that some were not doing their job, then this should have been stated in their termination letters.
“But to say so a year later is completely unkind and insensitive.
“To us, it’s like he was slapping the employees on the face when he’d already kicked them out,” he said to FMT.
Ismail was commenting on Mueller’s interview with German broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW), where he was reported as saying that he had to slash 6,000 jobs as many of the airline’s 20,000 employees were doing nothing, with some even sleeping in the hangars.
Nufam had then come to the employees’ defence, stating that Mueller, as a foreigner, did not understand the Malaysian culture.
This statement received a lot of flak as some had interpreted it as Nufam supporting the alleged “sleeping on the job” culture. In fact, the Malaysian Employers Federation had said the statement would affect the image of all local workers and affect sentiments of those investing in Malaysia.
Ismail told FMT that the misunderstanding occurred due to a report by a local news portal which failed to highlight other parts of its statement which included the reason why some MAS employees may need to take an occasional nap.
“I am not saying Nufam encourages employees to clock in for work, then spend their time sleeping.
“What I said was when they work all day and night, sometimes they need to take a break and recharge.
“Operational work is not easy as after long hours, your eyes and your brain get extremely drained.
“Come down to the ground and I’ll show you how these people work, especially the crew when they fly 15 hours across the globe.
“Why were all these not mentioned when they published the story?”
