No changes to Khazanahs plan to lay off 6000 MAS workers

Khazanah Nasional Bhd will make no changes to its proposed plan to downsize Malaysia Airlines’ (MAS) employees numbers to 14,000 from the current 20,000.

The wealth fund’s MD Tan Sri Azman Mokhtar believes the 14,000 figure would be the “right size” to kick-start the MAS NewCo, which will come into force in May 2015.

Since the 12-point MAS recovery plan was unveiled by Khazanah in August last year, various unions representing all segments of MAS employees have criticised the proposed 6,000 employees lay-off.

Among the main unions lobbying for Khazanah to revisit the plan is the Malaysia Airlines System Employees’ Union Peninsular Malaysia (Maseu) and the National Union of Flight Attendants (Nufam).

“We had anticipated such issues to crop up on our idea of downsizing and re-negotiation of 4,000 contracts. But MAS is a national carrier which is very dear to us. A reset has to be done right this time, or we will end up having to pump more money into the airline in two or three years to come,” he said at a media briefing at the sidelines of Invest Malaysia 2015 in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

Azman said the laid-off employees will then be retrained at the Corporate Development Centre and re-deployed outside of MAS, potentially to fill in 4,500 new jobs in business process outsourcing (BPO) segment created by multinational corporations and foreign companies in collaboration with Khazanah.

“So far, the BPO has created 4,500 new jobs. The MAS employees who are not transferring to the NewCo, or decide not to join, will have an option to be re-trained and fill in the ready employment opportunities,” said Azman.

BPO is a subset of outsourcing that involves the contracting of the operations and responsibilities of a specific business process to a thirdparty service provider.

Azman said the proposed restructuring of the national carrier is on track, with CEO-designate Christoph Mueller now undertaking individual assessments to pick and choose the right candidates to join the NewCo.

In March 2015, Khazanah announced MAS will issue employment termination letters with three months’ notice to all its employees on June 1, instead of the earlier target date of April 1.

“The delay was due to Mueller’s decision to take on the assessment by himself and on an individual basis,” said Azman.

Article source: http://themalaysianreserve.com/new/story/no-changes-khazanah%E2%80%99s-plan-lay-6000-mas-workers