AVIATION UNION BREAKS RANKS AS KALPA ONCE AGAIN LOOKS LIKE FIFTH COLUMN
(Posted 26th January 2016)
The 10.000 member strong Kenya Aviation Workers Union came out with guns blazing in support of national airline Kenya Airways, which last week once again found itself under sustained assault from the Kenya Airline Pilots Association, in short KALPA and the equally militant head of Kenya’s central trade union body.
KAWU Secretary General Moss Ndiema minced no words when he openly accused KALPA to be the bane of the national airline and to a good part responsible for the financial dire straits the carrier found itself in.
‘Kalpa and their members cannot escape blame for grossly unattainable collective bargaining agreement demands that have skewed the wage bill in their favour despite low productivity. Their frequent withdrawal of goodwill has been cited as a contributory factor to flight cancellations that have forced disgruntled KQ passengers to migrate to other reliable carriers’ said Ndiema, immediately drawing widespread industry support while both KALPA and COTU were licking their wounded egos after several of their members lashed out at this correspondent with a venom rarely seen before but entirely in line with their general modus operandum.
Ndiema then added that the airline’s pilots should bear part of the burden of KQ’s declining profitability due to their ‘high pay despite poor productivity’, remarkable words for a union boss and more remarkable as these words were directed at a fellow union, albeit one which has lost its bearings.
This public crucification by a fellow union boss further expose KALPA as an interest group prone to overstepping their marks and making ludicrous demands. Last year was their competence called into question when they threatened industrial action over the wetlease arrangements of two Bombardier Q400NextGen aircraft by Kenya Airways subsidiary Jambojet, demanding that KQ pilots fly those aircraft. Yet at the time not a single one of those holding a type rating for these turboprop aircraft. Last week did KALPA give the airline an ultimatum for their management to resign en masse, once more exposing itself as the fifth column of others and without any sense of reality.
It is now all but obvious that KALPA is no longer interested in establishing fair working conditions for pilots but has become an agent of economic sabotage against the country as a whole and not just Kenya Airways.
