Kenya Airways has set tough employment conditions for contract workers who have been seeking to be hired directly by the national carrier.
The
airline this week distributed forms to the workers requiring them to
sign up allowing Kenya Airways to begin digging into their backgrounds.
The
consent forms, seen by Saturday Nation, will see KQ contact the
landlords of workers and also receive a report on their borrowing
history from the credit reference bureau TransUnion.
They
will also need to have a clean social media record. Investigations will
as well dig into the criminal as well as the litigation history of the
prospective employees.
Better terms
KQ
has at least 1,000 contract staff hired through about five recruitment
firms — Career Directions Limited (CDL); Insight Management; Tradewinds
Aviation Services; Preferred Personnel Africa; and Strami.
The
contract workers have been pushing KQ to hire them directly, citing
better terms offered to their counterparts who perform the same job.
The consent forms have been given to Career Directions and Insight Management employees.
KQ is seeking to hire at least 300 staff.
“The
appointments are not on permanent terms, they will be on KQ contracts
rather than on CDL terms,” said the national carrier in a statement.
The
contract staff, most of them cabin and ground crew, went on a go-slow
last year as they sought to be employed on permanent terms.
Both
Kenya Airways and the Career Directions chief executive Gabriel Ouko
said the decision to bring the new workers on board was not linked to
the industrial action.
“KQ at its own discretion will
from time to time determine who and the number of employees they would
like to employ. This is determined by their own strategy and not by the
strike or any influence,” said Mr Ouko.
A contracted
member of KQ’s cabin crew who spoke on condition of anonymity said that
all Career Directions employees who’ve worked with the airline for at
least three years had received the forms.
New norm
Kenya Airways termed the stringent background checks required by KQ as “normal practice” in the aviation industry.
Sam
Omukoko, chief executive at Metropol Credit Reference Bureau, said that
the credit history checks were in keeping with current trends in the
public, and more recently, private sector.
“It will
not deny you employment, but it contributes to character assessment,
particularly for institutions dealing with financial matters,” he said.
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