KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 24): The National Union of Flight Attendants (Nufam), which represents 3,500 cabin crew working in beleaguered Malaysia Airlines (MAS), wants the national carrier's senior management and shareholder Khazanah Nasional Bhd to be transparent with their restructuring plans, saying the employees are not provided with a positive direction right till this day.

"As of today, none of the unions are being briefed and Nufam is dissatisfied with the way how ‎Khazanah has sidelined the union in all its meetings. If it plans to ignore the union, then MAS will have to face the problems later," said Nufam secretary-general Mohd Akram Osman in a statement today.

He added that existing employees have not been briefed of what the final offers MAS would bring to them.

"Surely MAS can't do it last minute or at the eleventh hour and hope the employees will have not much choice but to accept these new offers. That is absolute unfair for people who have served the airline for more then 10 years in order to make hasty decisions and take up offers which they are not even aware off," he said.

Mohd Akram was referring to Khazanah's 12-point restructuring plan for MAS, which sees it trimming its staff force by 6,000 to 14,000 and a new company to be formed, among others.

He also questioned the hastiness of MAS in getting rid of the 6,000 employees.

"‎Issuing a resignation letter to all and provide these employees with new terms of employment without discussing with the staff unions sounds very fishy.

"It looks like MAS is being formed as a brand new company, while the real fact it is not. So what positive changes will MAS bring to the airline if these employees remain with MAS?" said Mohd Akram.

On its part, Nufam believes that MAS can sustain with the existing numbers of employees unless they offer the employees to retire early or offer them a Voluntary Separation Scheme.

"The majority of cabin crew are made up of senior crew members who are experience and is MAS planning to get rid of them due to reason of the existing allowances and retain only the new ones with lower offers? How will anyone were to adjust if they have been surviving on the current income?" asked Mohd Akram. 

"MAS need the experience employees as the airline can't run their operations without these experience employees. This we know for the real fact that MAS will not ‎be able to match up their existing in flight service standards without retaining the experience crew members," he said. 

"As it is now, the airline is short of crew, pilots and engineers and we wonder what are the numbers they are looking at to eliminate these employees," he added.

He also ticked off the MAS management for not providing the real picture about its succession plans.

"There are inside stories which the public do not know, perhaps the prime minister himself is not being correctly briefed over the staff problems. 

"The internal issues are unsettled and here they (management) are talking about getting the business going as usual," said Mohd Akram.

"We also believe the mismanagement legacy will continue if the existing corporate practices remains unchanged. There are top level management failures and decisions made without proper evaluation and yet the staff are being blamed. 

"The problem will remain if the management does not change their concept to run a world renowned airline business," he added.