Emirates Airline Creates Culture of Fear, 'Golden cage' for Crew. (RT).
Alwaght- Emirates
Airline creates “a culture of fear,” where workers feel unprotected,
targeted and trapped, the administrator of a dedicated whistleblower
site told RT.
Employees of the company refer to it as a “golden cage,”
which allegedly exhausts crews beyond their limits and employs
punishments when complaints are filed, he added.
Speaking on condition of
anonymity, the administrator of donotflyemirates.wordpress.com, which
collects the accounts of Emirates Airline pilots and publishes their
stories online, stressed that the site administrator noted that the
United Arab Emirates (UAE) does not allow unions, which leaves staff
even more vulnerable to abuse.
"If
you make a mistake – or even if you don’t make a mistake, if someone
blames you for something – you don’t get the chance to defend yourself.
You just get the warning, they just fire you."
"After
some time spent in Dubai you feel like everything you have, your whole
life is in danger. Because if you get fired, you’re going to lose your
house, you’re going to lose your whole life. This is why they are
referring to it as a ‘golden cage".
The whistleblower site is
already banned in the UAE, but the airline wanted to silence it further,
as Emirates Airline lawyers reached out to Wordpress and urged the
blogging platform to take down the whistleblower site, which it refused
to do.
"I
received a notification from Wordpress platform, they notified me that
Emirates lawyers tried to take down some content from my blog, and
Wordpress refused them".
The administrator, who is a
former employee of Emirates Airline, told RT that all the pilots’
stories are received via email. They are all verified before they are
published.
Earlier, RT spoke to current
as well as former Emirates pilots, who confirmed that the company forces
them to take heavy workloads and implements “bullying” techniques.
An ex-Emirates employee
described the company’s rosters as “brutal,” as the pilots are “expected
to switch from day to night… duties without enough rest in between,”
adding that he “loses several nights of sleep every month,” is
“constantly tired,” and has “no energy to do anything.”
Making matters worse is the
fact that the UAE’s General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), charged
with regulating aviation safety, has failed to act. Some Emirates pilots
believe that the Dubai-based aviation watchdog is not independent from
the state, and thus cannot adequately fulfill its duties.
The problem is further
exacerbated as the GCAA is controlled by the same people in charge of
the airline. The GCAA is chaired by the CEO of Emirates Airline &
Group – Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum.
The Emirates pilots argue that
even though the airline has a Pilot Fatigue Risk Management system, it
rarely does anything to address the problem. Instead, it pursues tactics
of pilot intimidation to discourage further complaints. Hmmm.........Endangering Passengers lives?
