Rumor: JAL proposed 5% pay cut and no bonuses this year

Nikkei reported that as part of its restructuring, Japan Airlines has asked its employee to accept a 5% pay cut and to give up bonuses in fiscal year 2010.

The cut was presented to all of JAL's eight unions and will start in April. The rumored cost saving from this wage cut is 30 billion yen. All JAL International employees are subject to the cut and JAL is considering expanding the cut to other units! This is on top of the layoff of 1/3 of the workforce. Another measure JAL is looking into is to freeze the scheduled merit increase and promotion so they can further control and forecast its cost before it turnaround.

Not sure how the JAL staff is going to take this news. But I am confident that they will remain professional when dealing with customers.

By the way, tomorrow (February 19 2010( will be the last trading day for JAL before it get delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange. If you want to buy it for whatever reason, tomorrow will be your last chance. It only costs 1,000 yen + fee if the stock price remains at 1 yen.

Source: Nikkei via Reuters (The English report from Nikkei requires subscription. But if you want to read the original Japanese version, you can find it here)