Ex-Cathay cabin crew lose claim for damages over 'unfair' contracts
Cathay Pacific has succeeded in blocking an attempt by nine retired stewardesses to claim HK$10 million in entitlements they say they have lost out on because of discriminatory practices.
District Court Judge David Lok Kai-hong dismissed the claims made by the stewardesses, all of whom began working for the airline between 1975 and 1979, when it had a compulsory retirement age of 40 for female cabin attendants. Male flight attendants at the time were allowed to keep working until they were 55.
All the women worked up until their compulsory retirement dates, but took up yearly extension contracts for up to five years in ground-based positions. After those contracts expired, the women left the airline.
By that time, however, Hong Kong had enacted the Sexual Discrimination Ordinance. In 1999, Cathay offered to rehire the women in the positions they had been holding at the time they left the company.
As part of the deal, Cathay paid them the salaries, allowances and bonuses they would otherwise have been entitled to had they been allowed to keep on working in those positions. In return, the women signed an agreement stating the deal was a full and final settlement.
They later claimed the provident fund scheme they had signed on to before the compulsory retirements was more generous than that offered when they were rehired and initiated action to reclaim the difference: a total of about HK$10 million they said was owed because of the discriminatory nature of the original employment terms.
Cathay argued the claims were unsustainable on the grounds that the women had waived their rights to any further claims by accepting the re-employment offer as a settlement, It also said the two-year limit for lodging a claim under the Sexual Discrimination Ordinance had expired.
Judge Lok agreed. He ordered all parties to pay their own costs.
