THE National Union of Flight Attendants Malaysia (Nufam) has called for an investigation into Malindo Airways Sdn Bhd’s massive downsizing of its workforce, which led to 2,000 airline staff becoming redundant.

“Nufam is recommending a probe to determine whether there were any discrepancies in the layoff of Malindo Air staff,” the union’s deputy secretary Shashi Kumar said in a statement today.

He also urged affected workers to reach out to the union for further queries, and to file a complaint with the Industrial Relations Department on their termination within 60 days.

The union said the compensation and retrenchment terms were unfair.

“Most of the complaints were that of the cabin crew only receiving RM4,000. Is this compensation reasonable and humane?” he asked.

“Most of the workers were from the B40 group who had contracts until 2024. So how is this fair?” he said.

The younger staff who have served for less than four years were the most affected due to the company’s Last-In-First-Out policy.

“Most of them do not know their rights and this is why they were terminated.

“We have been informed that many of them have not been paid for the last few months, and then they were suddenly laid off,” he said.

Shashi said the company still owed the affected workers their outstanding pay. 

The union has lodged complaints with the Human Resources Ministry but no action has been taken.

Nufam also reiterated that the airline may have received RM3 million from the Social Security Organisation (Socso) for the Employment Retention Programme to pay workers who were forced to go on leave.

“If this is true, Socso should investigate the complaints.

“There are staff who have complained to Socso over the Wage Subsidy Programme but they did not receive any feedback or response.

“We are upset over the current situation because the government has already said that companies cannot terminate their staff.

“What is the use of billions of ringgit of allocation given to companies if they are still laying off their employees?

“It is as if the company received the funds and violated their employees,” he said while highlighting the weakness in the regulation.

The Malaysian Insight reported yesterday that a three-month salary package is among the severance package for some 2,000 Malindo Airways Sdn Bhd employees whose stint ended yesterday in a retrenchment exercise as Covid-19 takes a major hit on revenue.

The company’s retrenchment policy and guidelines sighted by The Malaysian Insight revealed that the retrenchment package will be paid out in instalments.

“Staff who will receive total gross retrenchment severance amount of RM15,000.00 and below, the payment will be made in three instalments. The first instalment payment will be on November 30.

“Staff who will receive total gross retrenchment severance amount of RM15,001.00 and above, the payment will be made in six instalments, with the first payment on November 30.

Malindo became the most trending topic on Twitter yesterday as staff took to social media to “sign off” from the company while words of support poured in from social media users.

Chief executive officer Capt Mushafiz Mustafa Bakri said in an internal memo sighted by The Malaysian Insight that the airline is only making 10% of its pre-pandemic monthly revenue while its fleet has been halved. – November 1, 2020.