Air New Zealand has reportedly proposed a further 385 cabin crew redundancies by the end of the year, with the E Tū union saying they should stop outsourcing work overseas instead.
E Tū said today that workers at Air New Zealand had been told of the proposal today.
A member of the union, who was not named in the release, called the proposal "devastating".
"Every time as cabin crew, we think we are going to get a reprieve and get back to doing what we love – we keep getting hit down," they said.
"We've already lost 900 mid-to-long haul crew - we want to see Air New Zealand flourish and we want to save New Zealand jobs.
"Our goal is to see the airline bounce back as quickly as it can, so we can start getting our colleagues back."
Savage, E Tu's head of aviation, said there's no good reason why Air New Zealand should retain a contract sourcing cabin crew overseas and then cut staff here.
"The Shanghai base has always been about paying crew less and devaluing the role of cabin crew," he said.
"Outsourcing is a barrier to raising standards in aviation and it needs to end."
Air New Zealand reported an after-tax loss of $454 million for the 2020 financial year.
It has already taken thousands of redundancies as a result of the downturn in air travel due to Covid-19.
"In response to the decline in demand on our North American routes, we have reduced our Los Angeles flights from daily to three return flights per week, and converted all of our San Francisco flights to cargo only services," chief operating officer Carrie Hurihanganui said.
"We recognise that a reduced schedule will require a smaller number of cabin crew going forward and we are working through what this means for the team. Any decision we make will be made in consultation with our people and the unions, with redundancies as the last resort.
We appreciate that our cabin crew have already made significant sacrifices throughout Covid-19, but sadly our international schedule remains largely limited by border restrictions and unfortunately there is not enough flying to provide sustainable rosters for the number of crew we have."
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