Richard Branson’s putting Virgin Airlines staff on unpaid leave and people have been doing the maths

John Plunkett. Updated March 16th, 2020

Virgin Atlantic is planning to ground 75% of its fleet by the end of this month as a result of coronavirus and will ask staff to take 8 weeks unpaid leave, according to reports today.

BREAKING: Virgin Atlantic plans to cut about 80% of flights each day by the 26th of March, grounding 75% of planes by then. They are also asking staff to take 8 weeks of unpaid leave during the next three months.

More on #COVID19 here: https://t.co/syXnIEDWKD pic.twitter.com/cdACryuu5i

— Sky News (@SkyNews) March 16, 2020

It got people thinking how fair this was, especially given how extraordinarily rich Branson is reported to be. These 4 responses pretty much sum it up.

https://twitter.com/liamyoung/status/1239549451812904962?s=20

https://twitter.com/flocorf/status/1239533016365572097?s=20

https://twitter.com/TobyJPeacock/status/1239548859946340355?s=20

If Richard Branson paid his 8,500 staff £10,000 for those eight weeks from his own personal wealth he'd still have £4.15 billion to scrape by on https://t.co/Z8487P6qva

— James Felton (@JimMFelton) March 16, 2020

In short, this.

Bransons employees go without whilst a billionaire with a private island and space program wants a bailout from the treasury

— Lesser Known English Big Foot (@KnownFoot) March 16, 2020

Image Pixabay