Ex-Gratia

The company that I am working for, is giving a special ex-gratia payment at the end of this month. It ranges from RM1000 to RM1500 depending on their PMS ratings. It is a good news but here something I like my readers to ponder:

There is no annual increment for this year. The seniors employees of 10 years and above are the biggest losers. If we were to take a mere 5 percent from RM2000 basic salary, the amount is RM100. This is the extra amount of money each employee will be getting in his monthly salary at the end of the month. RM100 multiply by 12 months equals to RM 1200 and the company is now paying ex-gratia of RM1000 for the whole year. Can you see, we have lost RM200 per person and just imagine how much did the company saves by giving us one time payment so called ex-gratia? This is a very basic and rough idea on the calculation of sum that we are losing individually for this year.

Of course, RM1000 is better than nothing. It is actually to pacify us. Those who fly the B737 aircraft can justify my claim of recent spate of flight delays due to technical problems. My 14 years of  flying with this great airline has proven me one thing; when we are facing with unusual aircraft’s problems related to maintenance and services, just wait patiently dear friends. Sooner, we will be notified with some clever names given for special payment to pacify the silent protesters. And today, it is indeed called “special ex-gratia” payment which seemingly given to us for our achievements. I must congratulate our Engineering department for making this payment  as a “hope” comes true.

I do not understand the rational or the wisdom of our middle management and directors including the CEO when comes to rewarding their staff. Facts, figures and history have shown many times for many years that, when you did not pay the deserving bonus or increment; you will have numerous “technical related problems” with the aircraft and every Tom and Harry in the company, even the janitor knew why all these problems occurred and YET, you people would rather chose to stubbornly holding to the notion….no bonus!

Why must you let all these recurring technical problems to happen and lost millions of ringgit because of it? You knew for sure, these kind of “silent protests” will eventually be carried out if their expected payments are not met. Whether you like it or not, you will have to pay the bonuses or special payment with whatever special names of payment you may concocted to use.

Why can’t you make peace and good for PR by giving us our deserving cash without having to go through these “annual technical problems” ? Those millions of ringgit that may have lost due to cancellations and flights delays could have been better to equally divided to all your staff.

I am no MBA but a simply nice gesture from the company could have saved millions. Then, we will have a win-win situation. Now, with your ex-gratia payments on top of your millions lost because of flight delays etc…you have lost even more money.