MAS is set to terminate the services of all its staff and migrate all its operations to a new entity, MAS Bhd, which will only hire two thirds of its current workforce with the other third being ‘invited’ to report to the Corporate Development Centre for ‘retraining’.
MAS, and its owner Khazanah, is telling the whole country that the best way to sack workers is to shut down the current set-up without the necessary compensation via the conventional voluntary separation schemes (VSS).
It is not uncommon for companies to terminate workers with compensation but to terminate the entire company and re-hire in a new company is such a cynical manipulation of labour laws and Khazanah’s role as a government-linked corporation.
If private companies were to follow MAS’ example, it would result in major economic havoc with massive unemployment.
The employees of MAS must not be made victims and forced to shoulder the blame of more than two decades of mismanagement of MAS since Tajuddin Ramli’s takeover of the airline in 1993.