The fate of flight attendants

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