Don’t make the same mistakes again

Don’t make the same mistakes again

You ask if Thomas Cook staff are faced with an impossible choice (Travel Weekly November 5).

This is not the first time Thomas Cook staff have taken pay cuts; they took a 3%-5% cut based on individual salaries during the Gulf War. Staff were offered enhanced voluntary retirement and redundancy packages; branch office cleaning contracts were temporarily suspended and rosters introduced for the staff to clean their shop themselves.

But when the customers came streaming back into the shops after the conflict there was hardly anyone left to serve them. As the manager of a shop with the highest customer flow in our region, I faced daily abuse and complaints from potential customers, demanding to know why I hadn’t enough staff to deal with the queues at my counter. There was a recruitment freeze for months and no assistance from other shops in the region who were all in the same position. Staff had time off due to stress, which added to the pressure, and travel and foreign exchange revenue came to a standstill because of the myopic attitude of senior management to the upturn in demand.

Nobody thanked the branch staff for what they endured during this period, and I firmly believe that those in head office didn’t know or care. There was no compensation for loss of earnings for pay cuts taken when the company returned to more profitable times. It is easier for someone earning £40,000-plus to accept a cut than someone earning £10,000.

Beware, Thomas Cook, that you don’t make the same mistakes again – you cannot rely on the goodwill of your staff forever.

Name and address withheld

Editor’s note: Travel Weekly would welcome a response from Thomas Cook