Up to 50% salary cut for Emirates staff and up to 100% for top execs

  DUBAI – Emirates airline announced on Sunday (March 22) it has taken a big hit following the coronavirus pandemic, with staff taking up to 50 percent salary cuts and two top executives taking 100 percent salary cuts. Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, chairman and chief executive of Emirates Group, called it an “unprecedented crisis situation” and said the airline could not “viably operate passenger services until countries re-open their borders, and travel confidence returns”. “The world has literally gone into quarantine due to the Covid-19 outbreak,” said Sheikh Ahmed, also announcing that the Dubai-based airline was suspending all its passenger flights starting on March 25. “This is an unprecedented crisis situation in terms of breadth and scale: geographically, as well as from a health, social, and economic standpoint. Until January 2020, the Emirates Group was doing well against our current financial year targets. But COVID-19 has brought all that to a sudden and painful halt over the past six weeks,” he said. Emirates said it will continue to operate its cargo flights. Sheikh Ahmed said that majority of employees in the Emirates Group will have salary cuts ranging from 25 percent to 50 percent in the next three months. The airline said that employees will continue to be paid their other allowances during this time. Junior level employees will be exempt from basic salary reduction. Emirates airline President Sir Tim Clark and Dnata president Gary Chapman will both take a 100 percent basic salary cut for three months. “Rather than ask employees to leave the business, we chose to implement a temporary basic salary cut as we want to protect our workforce and keep our talented and skilled people, as much as possible,” said Sheikh Ahmed. “We want to avoid cutting jobs. When demand picks up again, we also want to be able to quickly ramp up and resume services for our customers,” he said. DAJ/Expat Media

How Emirates Group is cutting costs:

Freeze on non-essential recruitment Freeze on consultancy work Work with suppliers on cost savings Postponement/cancellation of discretionary expenditure Paid or unpaid leave for employees Temporary salary reduction http://www.expatmedia.net/emirates-airline-suspend-passenger-flights/2020/03/
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