Kenya Airways on Thursday fired about 140 engineers and technicians over what it called an “illegal strike”, an internal memo from the CEO to all staff, seen by Reuters showed. The airline, which is 7.8 percent owned by Air France KLM, restructured $2 billion of debt in a rescue plan this month.
“(The) management will not entertain actions that impede the recovery process of the company,” CEO Sebastian Mikosz wrote in the memo.
He wrote the striking workers had ignored three written requests from the company to resume work since the strike started on Tuesday this week. The company did not offer an immediate comment when contacted by Reuters.
The technical assistants were demanding a 70 percent increase in basic pay while control and production engineers wanted a 250 percent pay hike, the airline said in a statement issued on Wednesday. It accused them of being unreasonable for demanding the raise soon after another increase that was implemented in April this year. It lost about 80 engineers to higher paying Middle East rivals in the fourteen months to February this year. The workers’ union was not available immediately for a comment. Kenya Airways employs about 4,000 workers in total with 600 of them in the technical department.
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