Bullied cabin crew forced to lie in overhead luggage lockers

A Chinese airline has promised to stop bullying by members of its staff.

They would take place after cabin crew completed their work.

Would you mind being bundled into an aircraft’s overhead luggage locker and made to lie there, even though you know it is just a “fun” gesture by your male colleagues to mark your initiation into their airline?

Female flight attendants at Kunming Airlines in southern China had things particularly bad-they were forced into overhead luggage bins by their male coworkers, according to photos recently posted on China’s popular messaging app Wechat by an account called “Civil Aviation Tabloid”, and later verified by Kunming.

The South China Morning Post claims that most cabin crew were bullied into lockers by security staff on completion of their 30-50 hours service for Kunming Airlines. It said it had no knowledge of the practice until a social media user shed light on it in a post on Sunday night.

Bullying tactics at work.

Kunming Airline has investigated the incident and said that these inappropriate traditions happened after the crew members finished their flight missions.

It said the bullying was carried out after cabin crew had completed their duties and the safety of flights was never affected. “But the company paid high attention to the incident and pledged to prevent this from happening again due to its negative effect to the image of the company”, airline sources said.

In the first quarter of 2015, traffic from China’s airlines surpassed 100 million passengers for the first time.

A sexist organisational culture further worsens the job insecurity that women have to grapple with.