The fate of flight attendants

I was a senior flight attendant with Bouraq Indonesia Airlines for six years, but my contract was discontinued last year. My employer, who had treated me as a permanent staff, refused to retain me and failed to compensate me accordingly. They constantly proposed to me (and others) a compensation half of the minimum amount that was prescribed. Eventually I accepted it, as did many others.

Recently, Bouraq Indonesia Airlines opened a new program to fly some routes with a leased Fokker 28. Being available, I enrolled, as did 31 other former colleagues. We began training after it was delayed many times. However, Bouraq requested that we sign a document confirming our training and that some penalties would be imposed on us if we resigned without any reason during that period. It is quite common and acceptable as they invested in our training.

So far, we made no mention of salaries but we assumed that we would be paid as we were in the past, which was not too bad compared to other sectors.

As the company started to drag its feet, all of us were suspended to wait for starting the operation and signing the final contract of employment. This lasted about three months (with very minimum pay) without any indications of the company's intention nor any communication with the staff. Finally, we were all called up, only to find out that we'd be paid junior basic salaries and Rp 3,000 per flying hour.

Many of us (all senior and well experienced staff) did not have much choice but to accept these low and underpaid conditions. Other flight attendants have found much better opportunities with foreign air carriers, which are more professional and with reasonable terms. However, that one exclusion letter mentioned above with penalties convinced us not to accept other jobs in order to avoid the legal implementations by the company.

Now the result is that Bouraq Indonesia Airlines, "The image of (employment) unreliability!", canceled that Fokker 28 program and 12 of us (the rest got positions at junior wages on a different aircraft, which is no bargain but still better than being kicked in the behind!) found ourselves without any compensation for our time wasted and for the (much better) opportunities we may have had or for few the position they gave up to enroll.

W.L. HANDAYANI

Jakarta