Qantas contracting packaging work to cheap prison labour

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Perhaps companies should never use the disabled companies since then they will not have to worry about moving away from using them. That QF did support them may have been commercial, may have been for other reasons, but they also have the right to move elsewhere if they choose

To start complaining if companies do just encourages to not use in the 1st place. QF is just a commercial business, nothing more

Dave
 
I am 100% certain that some of the prisoners can sing just as good. May be Qantas can ditch the little kiddies and contract the prisoners to sing "I still call Australia home" for their commercials.

Further, why don't they just contract the call centers to Corrective Services, surely it'd be cheaper than contracting out to India. That will at least keep jobs in Australia and give those prisoners a chance to fleece our credit card details.

Hi all,

Quite a few large call centre operations are run from within corrective services in the US.

While they are in prison, most inmates will one day return to society and if we want to give them a chance they need to have some skills. If by sealing QF headphones they then learn the skills necessary to hold down a job once freed I think QF have done a great community service by preventing further crimes.

Yes giving jobs to disabled people is also important but they more than likely will have other opportunities for work which may then teach them new skills.

Another way of looking at it is they are helping to offset the cost to the tax payers of their upkeep so another win for us all.

ejb
 
May be Qantas can ditch the little kiddies and contract the prisoners to sing "I still call Australia home" for their commercials.

Haha..... what a great idea - I think it would be quite the marketing campaign! :lol:
 
The penny pinchers amongst the corporate community would squeal with delight at the thought of cutting costs by employing prison labour, but a organisation that constantly reminds the Australian market that they are "the spirit of Australia" should choose community conscience over cost savings.

Would First class passengers rather pay an extra $2 per sector knowing that their headphones were packed by people with a disability (and keeping those disadvantaged people employed), rather than saving $2 to have their headphones packed by prison workers?

I’m not a stockholder, but for a publicly traded company I’d expect them to choose the best option to make a profit. It might be more than small change to switch from disabled people to prisoners. I don’t see it as a huge loss though, I’m sure they’ll do other things.

I am 100% certain that some of the prisoners can sing just as good. May be Qantas can ditch the little kiddies and contract the prisoners to sing "I still call Australia home" for their commercials.

For this to work they’d need to contract it out to juvenile detention centres, clearly! :p
 
Not at the expense of a community organisation that supports disability workers, sorry. If your dumb enough to commit crime and get caught, you deserve to stare at concrete walls all day.

You sound like the type that would rather bring back the gallows of the ol' days and would gladly go to a daily public hanging (don't forget the popcorn).

In a different light, though, admittedly, we spend too much on our criminals.

Just because its cheaper, doesn't mean its right.

Despite what many people/organisations think, sometimes the almighty dollar is not the sole driving force in decision making (and nor should it be).

Of course :rolleyes: I should know - my study looks at sustainability integration, do you want to know how difficult that is without having to argue with bean counters! However there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. Some of it is below.

If it was, corporations would never donate a cent to charities.

If one was to really look at the ulterior motive, they'd probably find that this is one of the simplest, easiest pieces of CSR any company could garner. After all, those sustainability and CSR reports don't write themselves very well unless you have something to show for it. A donation to charity is easy, can be done in one bulk drop and doesn't require much effort either at any one time or on an ongoing basis.

Of course, it gets harder to be more cynical when considering other "CSR" type activities that QF (and other airlines in Australia for that matter) participate in, for example supporting junior sport.

I'm confident that if the two options were put to shareholders, they too would vote with a social conscience.

Really? I wish everyone had a social conscience like you did, however...

Perhaps companies should never use the disabled companies since then they will not have to worry about moving away from using them. That QF did support them may have been commercial, may have been for other reasons, but they also have the right to move elsewhere if they choose

To start complaining if companies do just encourages to not use in the 1st place. QF is just a commercial business, nothing more

Here is a person who can successfully completely separate rationalism and emotionalism.

The reasoning is perfectly rational - it may have just been a business based decision and QF never thought of the social aspects of employing the services of any particular company. The fact that the media picked up that the company that lost the tender employs disabled people and that the new "company" is the prison system has only focused on that part of the decision-making process.

Of course, the argument is then if QF never considered the social aspect of the decision (as has been highlighted in the media), then they are still, were and are completely heartless, and moreover emphasises that they are blindly money-driven.

Then the common counter-argument comes along saying that a business is a business. They can do what they need to make a profit; that is their objective. Everything else is peripheral.

Quite a few large call centre operations are run from within corrective services in the US.

That's new to me. Wow.

While they are in prison, most inmates will one day return to society and if we want to give them a chance they need to have some skills. If by sealing QF headphones they then learn the skills necessary to hold down a job once freed I think QF have done a great community service by preventing further crimes.

Yes giving jobs to disabled people is also important but they more than likely will have other opportunities for work which may then teach them new skills.

And here we have a rather sticky problem stemming from a controversial issue, that being the merits of rehabilitating prisoners. In arguing the value of that, we could see the CSR sticking out that way. Mind you, a lot of society would not look at that as CSR and would not look at that as being responsible. Picking disabled employment would be the far "easier" option, since no one can complain about that.

In reality you could be cynical and twist the story whatever way you like so that QF will always be the loser. Let's suppose that QF decided to choose Sunnyfield rather than Corrective Services based on "social" values of supporting disabled employment rather than economics. Let's suppose the news ran an article that way. What might be the response?

Supporters of prisoner rehabilitation saying that the decision was unfairly evaluated even though there may be whatever evidence that rehabilitation through employment is a good thing?

Shareholders complaining that QF is supposed to make a profit so they should do what they have to do to so?

Or people who denounce the humanity in seeing that disabled people are reduced to a role of merely sealing headphone bags which is a menial task when disabled people are entitled to the same rights as others and should have real jobs in real enterprises.

Gee, I could be a journalist.

I’m not a stockholder, but for a publicly traded company I’d expect them to choose the best option to make a profit. It might be more than small change to switch from disabled people to prisoners. I don’t see it as a huge loss though, I’m sure they’ll do other things.

Again, here is a shareholder who sees only the profit side of things.

As much as anyone is prepared to admit it or not, companies are still very, very strongly driven by profit and a lot of that is shareholder driven. Shareholders can be funny people, too. Executive salaries, anyone? Do we like them? If we don't, why don't shareholders actually have some guts to say, "No, you are paid far too much?"
 
Anat01 you forgot 1 point.Why should a government who has enacted very strict IR laws and who fully supported their Federal cousins abolishing Work choices let prisoners under their control work for well below award rates thus undercutting the private sector and meaning less jobs for their union supporters.
Surely prisoner rehabilitation should be the responsibility of the Government who runs the prisons.
 
Anat01 you forgot 1 point.Why should a government who has enacted very strict IR laws and who fully supported their Federal cousins abolishing Work choices let prisoners under their control work for well below award rates thus undercutting the private sector and meaning less jobs for their union supporters.
Surely prisoner rehabilitation should be the responsibility of the Government who runs the prisons.

The prisoners are not on a union agreement and , although their rates of remuneration may seem lower, it has to be considered that their living costs are being provided whilst normal workers typically have to meet their living costs from the salary

This whole thing seems like a big non-issue to me. Qantas is not anything other than a publicly listed private company and has made a decision to move the outsourcing

Dave
 
Anat01, i've read your response and feel slightly underwhelmed - you've not really given your opinion on the matter yet you have carefully dissected everyone else's thoughts from what would appear to be an ivory tower. What do you think QF should have done in this situation?
 
Anat01, i've read your response and feel slightly underwhelmed - you've not really given your opinion on the matter yet you have carefully dissected everyone else's thoughts from what would appear to be an ivory tower. What do you think QF should have done in this situation?

It seems you're looking to shoot someone off the fence and then when they start running. Well, so be it.

What should have they done? Nothing, actually.

I'm surprised QF had to rethink the tender for such a cheap task, i.e. I can't imagine QF "spent" so much on this task that they had to retender out for it.

If cost cutting was what QF were trying to do then I think they were targeting the wrong area.
 
The prisoners are not on a union agreement and , although their rates of remuneration may seem lower, it has to be considered that their living costs are being provided whilst normal workers typically have to meet their living costs from the salary

This whole thing seems like a big non-issue to me. Qantas is not anything other than a publicly listed private company and has made a decision to move the outsourcing

Dave
Dave i was just answering Anat01.No comment on QF who really i think are completely irrelevant apart from the fact the journalist picked up their change of contractor.So I agree with your previous comments.
 
Anat0l you forgot 1 point.Why should a government who has enacted very strict IR laws and who fully supported their Federal cousins abolishing Work choices let prisoners under their control work for well below award rates thus undercutting the private sector and meaning less jobs for their union supporters.
Surely prisoner rehabilitation should be the responsibility of the Government who runs the prisons.

The prisoners are not on a union agreement and , although their rates of remuneration may seem lower, it has to be considered that their living costs are being provided whilst normal workers typically have to meet their living costs from the salary

That is a good point I forgot.

Taking that into account, and the fact that prisoner's living costs are met by the government, that would make a better argument for Sunnyfield.
 
That is a good point I forgot.

Taking that into account, and the fact that prisoner's living costs are met by the government, that would make a better argument for Sunnyfield.

Conversely one might argue that providing services helps to reduce the burden on the taxpayers for the running of the prisons which benefits many people

Either way, QF , just like any other company, has the right to use whichever group best meets its needs for outsourced services

Dave
 
Either way, QF , just like any other company, has the right to use whichever group best meets its needs for outsourced services

I think we all know well that there is a distinction between someone's right to do something and whether it is ethical / correct.

Just as there is also a disconnect between what is law and justice.
 
I think we all know well that there is a distinction between someone's right to do something and whether it is ethical / correct.

You may think so in this case, I do not however. All I see is a good reason for companies not to go down the path of using such services in the 1st place if the press are going to castigate them when in the future they choose not to use them anymore

As far as law vs justice, the laws are what govern and justice is the correct application of the laws; Justice is not vengeance

Dave
 
You may think so in this case, I do not however. All I see is a good reason for companies not to go down the path of using such services in the 1st place if the press are going to castigate them when in the future they choose not to use them anymore

As far as law vs justice, the laws are what govern and justice is the correct application of the laws; Justice is not vengeance

Dave

I agree with you.

The people who think they act "ethically" by complaining about Qantas changing contractors to Prison workers are actually hurting Disabled people more as in the future Qantas and other companies will be very hesitant to ever give work to Disabled workers due to the problems faced if they move away from using them.
 
Hi all,

If the Corrections Dept can win the tender and then subcontract it back to Sunnyfield methinks Sunnyfield may have been tendering a little high to QF.

If they can do the job for less for corrections why didn't they offer QF a better price to keep the contract and not risk losing it?

ejb
 
If the Corrections Dept can win the tender and then subcontract it back to Sunnyfield methinks Sunnyfield may have been tendering a little high to QF.

They subcontracted a portion of the role - the Economy headsets. I believe they are maintaining the contracts for PE/J/F headsets, F/J and Y amenity packs (but could be wrong).

Perhaps politics were involved. Actually, of course politics were involved... Doesn't matter if they lost money or not subcontracting it, they were told to do it. Such is the *precious* contract that it was.
 
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