Virgin Atlantic are now financially stable, and are no longer burdened by the impact of the pandemic. However, the company are using Covid-19 as an excuse to unnecessarily cull its workforce for profit. On 5th May Virgin Atlantic announced that they were making 3000 employees redundant, 1540 of which were cabin crew. Since receiving further financial backing, redundancies in other areas of the business have decreased, but the number of cabin crew redundancies has remained the same.

Despite calls for Virgin to utilize the job retention scheme extension, to provide it's employees with vital income during this uncertain period; the company have made no effort to explore furloughing staff until October, in lieu of immediate redundancies.

Additionally, the company are enforcing further crippling cuts and changes to cabin crew's contracts. Some of these cuts include; limiting paid sickness, shortening holiday entitlement, halving rest on layovers, and inserting a contractual clause that allows the company to put cabin crew on unpaid leave without their consent.

The company are claiming these cuts are vital to the survival of the airline over the course of the next 3 years. However, alongside making these cuts the company are wasting millions of pounds saving dormant slots at Gatwick, with no plan of action of when they will be used. Virgin have also failed to cancel their new fleet order from Airbus.

Virgin Atlantic are purposefully carrying out these wholesale redundancies using a biased system designed to discriminate against those protected under the Equality Act 2010, whilst enabling the company to manipulate the results to favour the employees they wish to stay. This is resulting in countless people being victimized by Virgin Atlantic management.

We need the government to pressure Virgin Atlantic into justifying the need for redundancies, despite availability of the job retention scheme. This can be done by forcing the company into fiscal transparency to warrant the mass culling of it's front facing workforce. It is important that the welfare and financial stability of the individuals, parents and families that require job security from Virgin Atlantic is safeguarded during this period.

Cabin crew have been responsible for repatriating innumerable numbers of global citizens, without the proper protection or procedures in place to safeguard themselves from the virus. They have also been subjected to operating 30+ hour turn around cargo flights to mainland China and South Africa, to ensure Virgin Atlantic is able to continue operating. Now they are being told their services are no longer needed.

Please help stop airlines from exploiting their workforce, leaving countless people unemployed, whilst making opportunistic widespread changes to contracts under the guise of the pandemic.

Thank you for your time and help...