In recent years Cathay Pacific has followed the tradition of giving their staff a full months’ salary as a year-end bonus, but this year the bonus has been limited to ‘one months salary, or 30.000 HKD, whichever is less.’
Cathay Pacific has a total number of employees of about 27.000 people, and this announcement will affect a majority of them.
This is a good indication of the financial state that Cathay Pacific is in, with the unrest in Hong Kong and dropping traffic and passenger numbers they probably need to save wherever they can in order to not be running at a loss.
In addition next years pay-increase has also been capped at 2%. Last year Cathay gave its staff between 3 and 8 percent pay increase, so I am sure there are a lot of people out there who had expected more. As a comparison, this years inflation rate for Hong Kong is 3.1% as per the end of October.