President’s Opinion

Qantas Enterprise Agreement negotiations have begun in earnest; with meetings with Qantas management scheduled every week up until the federal conference. The last meeting before Christmas will be on the 9th of December. The ALAEA log of claims consists of the items most requested in the 2010 QANTAS EA survey.

A number of Qantas’s claims are around issues of ‘flexibility’ including increased use of casuals, going to school on single time and greater ability to change rostering at short notice. Alarm bells go off whenever companies start bandying the term ‘flexibility’ about, invariably the flexibility is about us bending over backwards.

The ALAEA is continually consulting with members on all aspects of the negotiation and your emails on the topic are helpful and always welcome. EA feedback meetings were to be held all around the country (with reps from smaller ports flown in) to keep members abreast of what is going on; but we unfortunately only got as far as Melbourne and Sydney before the rot set in.

Qantas management decided not to honour a previous agreement to release minimal executive members on OCS to carry out these meetings. Whilst this is extremely disappointing we were not surprised, as more often than not Qantas management cannot see the forest for the trees.

Our members at Sunstate are going through a torrid time at the moment with their protected industrial action to try and get a better deal from Qantaslink. They have been unfairly treated by the company in regards to being docked wages for carrying out regulatory required handovers and disciplined for carrying out their regulatory duties as licensed engineers – that is finding and reporting defects on unairworthy aircraft.

The attitude and actions of the respective management teams involved is an absolute disgrace not only to the aviation industry but to all Australians, reminding us why we need a strong and well supported organisation to protect the interests of all LAMEs and the aviation industry.

In the meantime all ALAEA members are encouraged to send in nominations for the AMT Maintenance Skills Competition (LAME Olympics) in Las Vegas, 2011. Please apply ASAP if you have missed out, by sending your application through to the office, as nominations will close shortly and we have less than ten nominations thus far for the team of four.

Keep safe,

Paul Cousins, President