President’s Opinion 

This month we are turning up the torque on our negotiations with Qantas. The airline’s management has repeatedly failed to act in the best interests of safety and has basically said it doesn’t know how to turn a profit while supporting Australian jobs.

ALAEA members know how important it is to Qantas’ safety record that they have the ability to perform heavy maintenance work in Australia, after all this is where we have some of the most highly trained LAMEs in the world. Yet when it comes to safety at Qantas, management is all over the place. Their rhetoric on safety during the ash cloud crisis is completely at odds with their inability to recognise the long-term implications of continual outsourcing of maintenance. Even full-page ads in most newspapers recently espoused safety and onshore maintenance, yet not one showed an engineer doing their job, which speaks volumes.  CEO Alan Joyce seems to be more interested in demonising our Association and scaring customers than actually considering how his industrial relations policy will affect the brand he’s hired to protect.

And I know that’s why members have overwhelmingly voted in favour of taking further protected industrial action – to highlight these discrepancies and show that we won’t accept their razor gang approach to this airline’s hard working employees. In fact, 81 per cent of members voted in favour of taking action. This should send a clear message to Qantas that employees may be loyal to the airline, but not to the current management team.

As a result of this ballot, members at Qantas will be participating in work stoppages on 4 July. This might sound extreme to some, but I want to make it clear that the Association has done everything it can to negotiate an agreement without resorting to PIA. Unfortunately Qantas management has not.  To minimise any impact on passengers, whilst still sending Qantas management a clear message, we are prepared to make members available for any overtime to cover those workers participating in work stoppages. This way the work will still be done and safety won’t be compromised, and the only ones who will feel the impact are the fat cats sitting around the Qantas boardroom

At the end of the day, all we want from Qantas management is for them to come back to the table and seriously talk to us about the very significant issues of job security, wage restructuring and the future of safety at Qantas. Let’s hope they stop attacking union leaders who have been working tirelessly to resolve this issue, and start listening to their longstanding employees who have been with the airline through thick and thin.  Job security for those who have helped build this airline's reputation as safest in the world should be a priority for management, not a casualty.

In a related matter, the resultant job reduction of LAMEs at Sunstate is a deliberate and disgraceful act designed to punish hard working engineers who have done nothing more than stand up for themselves and their fellow LAME’s rights in the workplace.  QantasLink management and Qantas management as a whole should be utterly ashamed of this craven and cowardly behaviour, but rest assured the ALAEA will pursue these workers’ rights and the fight is not over yet.

Keep Safe,
Paul Cousins,
Federal President

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