Originally Posted by
Chinesekiwi
I have an extremely strong connection to this company and am a shareholder. My thoughts as an interested long term observer....
1. Luxon (or Low Wage Luxon as he was often cheekily referred to by Air NZers) did bring his personal values to the office. His memos to staff were frequently peppered with references to his do good religious activities of himself and his family.
2. He most certiainly stopped the PINK FLIGHTS. They were commercially profitable but he personally intervened to stop them.
3. Luxon will not make a excellent leader of the country if that is what he seeks. He presided over a business that makes the huge percentage of its money from a near monopoly domestic business. It struggles in the competitive international space (It's a bloody tough business though). Luxon has in part held the numbers up by relentless focus on costs and that's great until you understand what that means and how it was achieved:
- He oversaw the casualisation of full time jobs into split shift broken hours and reduced benefits of more vulnerable workers such as aircraft loaders and check in staff. It is common for these 'part time - full time workers to require secondary employment.
- He oversaw and encouraged the 2014 cabin crew Project Choice as it was called. This essentially when all was said and done created a huge pool flight attendants (thank you John Key and the tweeks to employment law which kindly allowed for parallel employment contracts with vastly reduced salaries and benefits for the exact same work. It was a sensational transfer of money from workers to shareholders and reduced the cost of labour by many millions annually.
Result? - sharply increased staff turnover, reduced customer satisfaction ratings, far greater absenteeism, an enlarged head office workforce to manage the same work groups now with vastly different contracts.
- He allowed his team to attempt to, once again, take the razor to the engineers who were less vulnerable and had a strong worker union and were able to fight back.
Luxon's legacy to those inside the company is one of wealth transfer from workers to shareholders. It was no suprise then that his first political speech was straight into the old National chestnut - welfare, low income and beneficiary bashing.
Will he be a great leader for NZ - He'll look great and speak well. He'll would represent NZ well on the global stage. Less visibly I have no doubt he will behave as a Nat behaves - expect less humanity, stricter provisions for the poor, mentally ill, disadvantaged etc
I realise I will be slated here but these are my observations (yes I know Christopher and have had more than one direct conversation with him - I do not dislike the guy, he's a charming speaker and has a charisma but it must be acknowledge that he was a world view that most Kiwis will not identify with)