Top court hears Cathay dispute over attendants' holiday pay
Airline challenges ruling that allowances and commissions should be included in holiday wage
Cathay Pacific took its holiday- pay dispute with its flight attendants to the Court of Final Appeal yesterday.
The airline is challenging an appeal court judgment that it should include some allowances and commissions when calculating the cabin crew's holiday pay.
The dispute involves some 4,400 attendants and about HK$100 million, the Cathay flight attendants' union said.
Cathay lawyers argued that duty-free sales commissions, line-duty and ground-duty allowances - which attendants earn in the air and waiting for flights - are variables and should be excluded from the calculation.
The dispute stems from claims lodged in the Labour Tribunal about four years ago by flight attendants Becky Kwan Siu-wa, Vera Wu Yee-mei and Jenny Ho Kit-man.
The tribunal initially ruled in their favour and ordered Cathay to pay the shortfall, but the airline won on appeal. That ruling, however, was overturned by the Court of Appeal last year.
The top court reserved its judgment yesterday. It heard that an average daily wage is used to calculate the holiday pay.