Life’s about to get a little less controlled for Qatar Air employees.
And a fellow Canadian is front and centre when it comes to making this a reality.
Historically, staff that lived in company housing were monitored, crew risked being fired if they married or became pregnant within their first five years of employment, and female attendants were banned from being dropped off at work by a man she wasn’t related to.
Naturally, a lot of this sounds far-fetched to Western World young professionals.
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That’s why Qatar Air’s rapid expansion from a regional carrier into a long-haul global powerhouse has, not surprisingly, brought the conservative values of its home state into conflict with Western views on the rights of both women and workers in general. With the looming influx of thousands of new cabin crew from across the globe, the company has planned around two-dozen meetings to make sense of the changing policies and understand the needs of the workers.
Rossen Dimitrov, the senior vice-president from Canada, who oversees the carrier’s 9,500 flight attendants, is responsible for overhauling the Qatar Air Rulebook.
On the positive side, the airline has recently loosened some of its pre-existing conditions.
Crew no longer risk being fired if they get married within their first five years of employment or become pregnant. Come December, pregnant women will actually be offered temporary ground jobs, and they can get married at any time after notifying the company.
As for the whole provision on male drop-offs, the company is still working on that one. In the meantime, the provision “reflects a cultural norm in Qatar, which we must necessarily factor into our consideration of the matter, but we expect to be looking at this with the government,” the company said in an email response to the International Labor Organization, who found the drop-off provision amounted to discrimination.
The company added that it should be given credit for all it had already done.
As the carriers expands, the changes will be imperative in retaining crew. And that’s going to be pretty important – Qatar Air will add at least 6,000 flight attendants in the next two years. Such a number is necessary to staff the 320 new jets (worth $70 billion) it has on order.
The major draw of the job is the sheikdom’s tax-free status.
Given the current situation, however, a tax-free status isn’t worth an imposed curfew when living in employee housing or a ban on overnight guests. I mean, you couldn’t go for a morning jog even if you wanted to.
Most of the residents live rent-free, however, and a brand new building will open in October. Intended as a perk for women who have been with Qatar Air for at least four years, the 914-bed Crew City features one- and two-bedroom apartments, a pool, gym, sauna, grocery store, cafe, and laundry. So, yeah, it could be worse.
Dimitrov insists that in its recruiting the carrier is always transparent about the cultural norms that all crew members – foreign or not – must adhere to. Qatar is a conservative place, he says, and anyone coming to work for the airline or any other company must accept and adjust to that. Fair enough. In the meantime, if you’re in the market for an airline job, at least you know that you’ll no longer get fired upon marriage if you apply to Qatar Air.
As for any other changes, it’s safe to say, they’re still ‘up in the air.’
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