 |
| A Qatar Airways flight stewardess. (AFP/Getty Images - for illustrative purposes only) |
Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker has described as “a load of bull****” claims he forces his flight attendants to sign restrictive contracts that penalise pregnancy and weight gain.
“That is a load of bull****,” Al Baker said on CNN. “That is people creating issues because we don’t have unions and... they don’t like that.
“Our work practices are very progressive, people have all the rights that they require and [the] rumours being circulated [are] absolutely untrue.”
Al Baker said inspectors from the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) had visited his airline and found “that all these rumours are unsubstantiated and just created to paint a bad picture of Gulf carriers”.
ITF ran a campaign against Qatar Airways last year over its monitoring of staff and rules preventing women from becoming pregnant and getting married.
Qatar Airways contracts forbid any member of the cabin crew, the vast majority of whom are female, from marrying during the first five years of their employment with the firm.
Women who become pregnant also usually have their employment terminated.
"The treatment of workers at Qatar Airways goes further than cultural differences. They are the worst for women's rights among airlines," Gabriel Mocho, civil aviation secretary at the international grouping of transport unions, said last year.
In March last year, Al Baker said the contracts were to ensure the cabin crew did their jobs and there were not enough ground positions to allow pregnant flight attendants to temporarily take up another role with the company.
"You know they have come there to do a job and we make sure that they are doing a job; that they give us a good return on our investment," Al Baker said.
Most other international airlines allow flight attendants to work up to three months into their pregnancy, then offering them paid maternity leave or ground work. There are no restrictions on marriage.
No comments:
Post a Comment