Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce grounded all Qantas aircraft, locked out Qantas workers, and disrupted the travel plans of thousands of passengers, including visiting heads of state, on October 29.
The lock-out sparked a successful application by workplace relations minister Chris Evans to Fair Work Australia to end the lockout and stop industrial action by Qantas unions.
Fair Work Australia handed Joyce an effective weapon against the unions — the termination of legal, protected industrial action that members of the unions had voted for.
See also: Time to put Qantas back in public hands
The industrial action was a last resort against Qantas’ refusal to negotiate in good faith. The Transport Workers Union (TWU), The Licensed Aircraft Engineers Union (ALAEA) and the Pilots Association (APIA) have each been bogged down in negotiations with Qantas around pay, job security and conditions.
The TWU has been negotiating for more than six months, the pilots since October last year and the engineers since mid-last year.
During that time, the company recorded before tax profit of $552 million. Its net profit more than doubled, rising from $112 million to $249 million. Qantas’ revenue grew by 8%.
On the back of these big profits, Joyce announced plans to sack more than 1000 employees and is pushing hard to relocate some operations to Asia.
The Gillard Labor government’s Fair Work Act allows employers to lock out their employees and refuse to let them work or pay them.
Cartoon: Dan Boermans
These employer rights were brought over from the former Howard government’s Work Choices workplace laws. This is a good example of why many unionists say Fair Work Australia is really Work Choices Lite.
Under the act, the requirements for unions to take protected industrial action are akin to jumping through burning hoops. The laws undermine the protection of the right to strike guaranteed by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
Industrial action can take place only once a collective agreement has expired and only while negotiations continue for a new agreement.
Unions must apply to Fair Work Australia one month prior to take any action and a ballot of members must be held. This gives employers plenty of time to prepare the ground for lockouts and other responses.
Only union members have the right to vote on or take part in industrial action: others at the workplace cannot. Unions that stray from these requirements face huge fines.
The corporate world values the freedom the Fair Work Act gives to lock out workers indefinitely. Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Peter Anderson said in The Australian: “Once there is a union right to strike there has to be a complementary employer right (of lockout).”
But he also said, “Tribunal intervention should not automatically trigger arbitration powers,” indicating he thinks the FWA’s power to arbitrate on disputes goes too far.
Ironically, this opinion is shared — for the opposite reason — by unionists critical of Fair Work Act’s poor record for workers.
In light of Qantas’ moves, the Australian Council of Trade Unions has demanded changes, calling for earlier opportunities for the independent umpire to be able to arbitrate and resolve disputes.
Labour activist and blogger Chris White said on October 30 the Fair Work Act was stacked against the union movement. He said it “has no legal requirement for the employer to give notice to lockout, nor [the] balloting of shareholders [at] the annual general meeting and certainly not the many processes forced on unions for strikes. This serious process deficiency is yet another rule for the 1%.”
Federal Greens MP Adam Bandt has said he will introduce a bill to parliament that will require an employer to give three days notice of a lockout, allow Fair Work Australia to take the purpose of a lockout when deciding on whether to terminate protected action, and require the workplace relations minister to mediate when a dispute threatens major damage to the economy, or the health or welfare of the population.
But to give workers a fighting chance against the profits-first interests of an employer such as Qantas, employer lockouts should be banned entirely and the Fair Work Australia act should be amended to reflect this.
In an era when capitalist governments rule on behalf of greedy corporate interests, neither the government nor employers should have the right to terminate legal, protected industrial action. It ties workers’ hands when they are taking lawful action in pursuit of their claims.