Allan Kilavuka, Kenya Airways’ acting chief executive, has warned staff in an internal memo that large-scale job cuts will be part of its forthcoming nationalisation and ongoing Operation Pride turnaround programme, which was first announced in 2015.
“Roles will change; some may be enriched while others are merged. I also want to be clear that as difficult as it is, some roles will disappear altogether, resulting in redundancies,” he said, according to Kenya's Business Daily newspaper, which viewed a copy of the letter.
Kilavuka, who took up his new role on January 1 on the departure of former CEO Sebastian Mikosz, pledged to make the redundancies humane “and will involve relevant stakeholders as required by the law.”
The Kenya Aviation Workers Union (KAWU) reacted strongly, its secretary-general Moss Ndiema protesting in a letter to the airline on January 28 that the company had not yet notified the union of its intentions.
Sending employees home will not address the “perennial financial malady currently facing the carrier,” he said, suggesting that instead, corruption and mismanagement needs to be rooted out before a return to profitability is possible.
“In view of the above, we urge you to put on hold the restructuring exercise, pending joint consultation between parties as envisaged by the law,” Ndiema said.
In December, Kenya Airways issued a profit warning for the year ending December 31, signalling that its losses were expected to backslide further to a projected KES9.5 billion shillings (USD95 million). The airline last reported a profit in 2012.
