Liam Mitchell, Sydney
As the Christmas holiday period draws near, industrial disputes at Qantas threaten to escalate on three fronts as its management prepares to use Patrick Stevedores-style strike-breaking techniques to defeat a possible strike by flight attendants.
Qantas put forward a proposal earlier this year to establish a base in London in 2005, moving 400 flight attendants' jobs there, an exercise it claims will save it $18 million in its overseas operations. The Flight Attendants Association (FAA) has opposed the move, declaring it would mean massive job losses for flight attendants employed from Australia.
The union threatened to take industrial action over the Christmas holiday period to stop the London move going ahead. Qantas has responded to this threat by beginning to secretly train 360 flight attendants on short-term contracts, to be used as scab labour in the event of a strike. Initial denials by Qantas that this was the purpose behind its short-term training contracts have been followed by an admission that this is the case.
"We have short-term contract workers. Why do you keep using all the emotive words [strike-breakers]? Is there anything wrong with breaking a strike?", Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon told the October 22 Australian.
On October 20, FAA officials forwarded to the Civil Aviation Safety Authority a leaked internal memo from senior Qantas emergency procedures instructor Robert Ford in which he expressed concern that the potential strike-breakers being trained by Qantas are "being bulldozed through" their training course. The "contingent" flight attendants are being given 11 days' training instead of the normal six weeks.
"It seems to me", Ford wrote in his memo, "that the company is only interested in numbers, not quality." He also complained that "training reviews" were held without course instructors being present.
Qantas management is also facing criticism for awarding its directors a 66% pay increase, on top of a 36% increase two years ago, while blocking claims by its workers for a much smaller increase.
Qantas staff have had their wages frozen since 2001 in the name of defending the company's "international competitiveness". Qantas has announced an 88% increase in net profit, to $648 million.
The United Services Union, which covers Qantas terminal staff, is threatening industrial action over its pay claim, raising the executives' salary increase as a bargaining point. The USU has been told its members' pay increase would be limited to 3%.
Qantas maintenance staff, covered by the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, are also entering negotiations over a new enterprise agreement.
[To support job security and a wage rise for Qantas workers, visit < http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-A HREF="mailto:bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=37"><bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=37>.]
From Green Left Weekly, October 27, 2004.
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