Qantas Fleet Grounded 29/10

[munitalP]

...

So, the short sightedness of the unions has now seen Qantas start playing the final hand in this game of Texas holdem. The unions hold a pair of jacks, the flop, turn and river are a jack and 2 aces - the union does not realise the full house they believe will win them the game, is about to be trumped by the two aces that Qantas hold.

What are these aces? Simple. Qantas has started and will continue to ground aircraft to offset cost/losses. Airfares will increase until only very resilient customers will continue to pay the union forced fare increases, and another Australian icon will wither to a point of no return.

...

munitalP

http://www.australianfrequentflyer....urrent-union-activity-tide-support-33697.html

 

[samiam]

Make no mistake, this is AJs mess. The Qantas board could hardly agree to his continued tenure and 70% payrise one day and undermine him the next!

I thought earlier comments had set the record straight; a decision of this magnitude cannot be made by a CEO- the Board are complicit and to think otherwise is just naive.

 

[gbh]

Isn't it time to seriously consider renationalising mainline Qantas? The fact is that the national government can take a wider view of what constitutes an adequate return ... for example, the importance of QF to the national economy generally and the tourism industry in particular, the strategic importance of having a domestic engineering capability, and so on. Whereas private owners naturally consider only the financial returns. Qantas has been pointing out for years how hard it is to compete against foreign governmnet-owned airlines. If the only choices to even the playing field are to completely offshore Qantas or to nationalise, then my vote is for the latter.

How much would Qantas shareholders need right now to take the business off their hands?

 

[anat0l]

Hasn't Jack got as much right to voice his comment as any of us? Should any of us not like his comment, ignore it! Can't be much simpler than that, surely?

Have a right he may, but his right to an opinion comes with the right to anyone else to also voice their opinion, which may run contradictory to his and may also comment on his opinion (note again: comment on his opinion and not his right to an opinion per se).

The deprivation of one's right to an opinion in this forum parlance is banning or suspension; in real life terms it is the termination of one's life or means of communication.

So don't go on a point about any of us thinking he has not right to an opinion, because we can't take it away. And your telling us that we ignore his opinion in response to simply not liking it is basically telling us we have no right to respond to his opinion, which is just as flippant as your original comment as well as your comment on the necessity of unions.

 

[thewinchester]

I thought the addage here is "play the ball not the man". Hasn't Jack got as much right to voice his comment as any of us? Should any of us not like his comment, ignore it! Can't be much simpler than that, surely?

The exact same sentiment I expressed has been voiced in at least two separate posts after mine, and this member needs to either back up his wild claims or move on.

Sometimes, the man needs to be played, and the post in question was a clear example of where it was appropriate, specially when done in a civil tone.

Am I stuck in "Groundhog Day" or has this same post been posted twice previous? That's spam I believe.

LW did note there have been tech issues, and some members posts have double or triple posted.

If you notice this, please use the report button and allow mods to clean. Including a link to the original in your duplicate report will assist moderators greatly.

I've no idea what the union demands were, but I do know they gave notice about industrial action.

I'm not a union fan (far from it in fact), but I do know that unions are necessary to protect the conditions of workers. Anyone who suggests to quit and find another job if you're unhappy, has no idea.<snip>

Firstly, QF provided the required notice (51hrs to be exact).

However, in the interest of protecting their significant corporate assets and operating infrastructure, they grounded the airline to prevent any new risks to the carrier or passengers.

As for people having no idea suggesting that people should go elsewhere if they're not happy with their employer, I disagree. If things aren't going to change, you either need to pro-actively contribute to improving the situation, or know where to draw a line and walk away. I know from personal experience that if you stick around in places too long when things don't improve, this can seriously affect your physical health and mental well-being - of yourself and those around you.

I'd be confident that a good number of the workforce represented by these three unions would be going through what I describe above. While people all work and react differently, if you know you're not happy and it's affecting you with no sign of change - you need to become the change, or beeline for the exit.

 

[richie9x]

The interesting thing is the flight is still showing as scheduled. Only flights up until noon are showing as canceled. Not sure if this is significant, or is it that they only cancel the flights a few hours before they are scheduled to depart.

Some further observations i have made. It looks like domestic flights are changing from scheduled to cancelled about 3 hour prior to the scheduled departure.

 

[amaroo]

Love it. Bloody unions - nothing but useless thugs. They do have a purpose in supporting members.....but never trying to run a business. Lets see the union talk tough while their members earn nothing. Poor on ALP government, now has to step in and break their cosy relationship with their union financial backers......ha,ha, sweet justice. Boys & girls, accept the world has moved on & "NO ONE" is entitled to a job for life culture or completely outdated work practices. As a QF shareholder, customer & FF I'm very happy & supportive of the action that QF board & management has taken.....along with 94% of the other shareholders - as per the AGM last Friday.

 

[anat0l]

Isn't it time to seriously consider renationalising mainline Qantas? The fact is that the national government can take a wider view of what constitutes an adequate return ... for example, the importance of QF to the national economy generally and the tourism industry in particular, the strategic importance of having a domestic engineering capability, and so on. Whereas private owners naturally consider only the financial returns. Qantas has been pointing out for years how hard it is to compete against foreign governmnet-owned airlines. If the only choices to even the playing field are to completely offshore Qantas or to nationalise, then my vote is for the latter.

How much would Qantas shareholders need right now to take the business off their hands?

We're in a fully deregulated regime now and Virgin would raise hell if Qantas were moved to be renationalised. It won't happen unless we end up with an Air New Zealand situation (which in itself is messy, and isn't quite the same as Australia where there is actually a genuine second player in the market).

Besides, we're talking about the Australian government that could potentially run the airline. Apart from a very tenuous, unreliable and naive belief that there would be a relief in financial burden, I have my doubts about just how effectively an Australian government could run an airline, let alone any given business. Why do you think our governments of all levels live off an unhealthy culture of privatisation and tender/subcontracting (with anything from ineffectual to incapacitating consequences)?

Say what you will, but I have more confidence in the current management running the airline (notwithstanding the current situation) compared to the Australian government.

 

[Deleted User]

Joyce live on abc1 now

Happy to put on youtube if anyone is interested...

ABC Inside Business 30/10

 

[thewinchester]

Happy to put on youtube if anyone is interested...

ABC Inside Business 30/10

If you are able to do it quickly, might be worth it. Otherwise if it'll take a while, ABC is normally pretty good loading clips and transcripts to the website for most of the Sunday programs.

 

[11sjw]

Ok, latest from Fair Work hearing is that there won't be a decision until tomorrow morning.

This is due to further evidence needing to be called, and allow parties time to prepare any questions for cross examination before further deliberations and handing down a decision.

It's currently 0035 AEDST/1635 GMT, and it's likely they'll be nothing new on this until at least 0830 AEDST/0030 GMT.

I've been following this since it broke (1400 AWST), been glued to the couch and have forgot to eat my leftover creamy roast tomato risotto which I warmed up in the microwave at least 2hrs ago.

Frankly, I'm shattered and am calling it a night. See you all tomorrow.

Wow, solid work there tw. Looking forward to more updates fromm AFF's correspondent

btw, while people are using other people's livelyhoods as bargaining chips, and others are happy to disrupt the travel plans of 100s of 1000s of people so that they try and squeeze a bit more of a raise out of their employer, let's all spend a minute in silence on the news that an Afghani trainee has gone mental and killed three of his Australian Army trainers in Afghanistan

Lest We Forget.

This perspective should be applied to both sides of this dispute.

Just to clarify some facts:

1/ all non-ALAEA/TWU/AIPA staff will continue to be paid - even after Monday.

2/ all staff - INCLUDING ALAEA/TWU/AIPA will be paid through until Monday.

3/ the unions have the legal right to strike.

4/ the company has a legal right to lock out striking workers.

Now, we can take sides in the dispute if we choose, and we can most certainly complain about the disruption. We can by all means question AJ's actions generally, as CEO and his direction for the company.

But you absolutely can not trash Qantas and say "You can't do that", "That's not fair to the staff".

Sorry - it is fair, you strike - you risk being locked out - fact, fair and truth.

If the individual workers were not aware that this could be a consequence of their industrial action, then they should complain to Purvinas and Sheldon for misleading them.

The unions hold at least 50% responsibility as a lock-out can only occur in response to protracted industrial action by workers.

Whether or not this is strategically and tactically the best decision for Qantas will be something to reflect on later.

In the meantime - you are all entitled to agree or disagree with Joyce.

But the facts remain..... Innocent staff will still be paid. And striking staff get what was coming to them (deservedly or not).

Excellent statement. The unions wanted to head down this path well QF just accelerated it to a head.

 

[anat0l]

I thought earlier comments had set the record straight; a decision of this magnitude cannot be made by a CEO- the Board are complicit and to think otherwise is just naive.

To be fair, his concluding paragraph in the post ended up by placing the blame on both AJ and the QF Board for their longstanding piecemeal destruction of the airline. So whosoever caused the mess is rather irrelevant in reality - his criticism is directed at all of them.

 

[Alanslegal]

Surely Qantas can call these 'groundings' as an enhancement to the frequent flyer program. You see, historically they like to take away things and call it a benefit :shock:

Jokes aside, I still sit on the fence and can't side with either Qantas or the unions. Processing the mass of information in the last 18 hours all I can say is that there are pro's and con's on both sides and that international aviation is a seriously complex (and difficult) business. That $5M that Alan Joyce is being paid, well he deserves every cent.

 

[Hvr]

...
As for people having no idea suggesting that people should go elsewhere if they're not happy with their employer, I disagree. If things aren't going to change, you either need to pro-actively contribute to improving the situation, or know where to draw a line and walk away. I know from personal experience that if you stick around in places too long when things don't improve, this can seriously affect your physical health and mental well-being - of yourself and those around you.

I'd be confident that a good number of the workforce represented by these three unions would be going through what I describe above. While people all work and react differently, if you know you're not happy and it's affecting you with no sign of change - you need to become the change, or beeline for the exit.

I so agree with this part of the post. Most employees are in it for the long haul so to speak. Also, I believe that running at the first sign of discontent in any relationship is the wrong thing to do. If you truly value that relationship then you will take many steps to maintain it and even make it better.

Like thewinchester I too have been affected by sticking around a place too long after trying for many years to improve it. I have now done training, got qualifications, experience etc where I can change industries easily and move on to a new job. I wouldn't put myself through the things I have previously.

What this means is that if things do go bad in a company the people you really need, i.e. the people who make things happen and do it well will leave at their timing meaning that you are left with fewer top quality people and the downward spiral continues with the resultant negative effects on the organisation.

There needs to be a circuit breaker to get the planes flying again and soon, then good faith negotiations by all parties to resolve this series of disputes.

GFC2 is very foreseeable and QF needs to prepare for hard times ahead with a positive workforce.

 

[Deleted User]

If you are able to do it quickly, might be worth it. Otherwise if it'll take a while, ABC is normally pretty good loading clips and transcripts to the website for most of the Sunday programs.

youtube mainly useful for OS members since viewing of iview is not allowed outside australia...

Joyce being grilled about his salary, does not look comfortable at all

 

[amaroo]

Love it. Bloody unions - nothing but useless thugs. They do have a purpose in supporting members.....but never trying to run a business. Lets see the union talk tough while their members earn nothing. Poor on ALP government, now has to step in and break their cosy relationship with their union financial backers......ha,ha, sweet justice. Boys & girls, accept the world has moved on & "NO ONE" is entitled to a job for life culture or completely outdated work practices. As a QF shareholder, customer & FF flyer I'm very happy & supportive of the action that QF board & management has taken.....along with 94% of the other shareholders - as per the AGM last Friday.

 

[QF WP]

At least I have already maintained Gold for next year with QF, so I can transfer my flying to VA without much problem - time to make use of my status match. Prices may be a little higher, but I can live with it - better a higher price than a delay/cancelled flight

 

[Deleted member 29185]

And your telling us that we ignore his opinion in response to simply not liking it is basically telling us we have no right to respond to his opinion,

Not at all. You can disagree with his opinion without demeaning the guy. If you can't do that just ignore. That was what I was saying, play the ball not the man!

this member needs to either back up his wild claims or move on.

No he doesn't. It was his thoughts. He says he could "see this coming". You cannot say that's false as you cannot know otherwise. It was his opinion and he doesn't have to back that up at all. You may disagee that it was widely expected (I disagree too) but neither you nor I can say Jack didn't at some point say to himself "I can see QF locking the workers out"!

LW did note there have been tech issues, and some members posts have double or triple posted.

Yes I noticed the clarification after I posted that message and it's understood.

Firstly, QF provided the required notice (51hrs to be exact).

Technical copout. The reality is there was no notice before travel disruptions.....effective immediately were the words and the result.

As for people having no idea suggesting that people should go elsewhere if they're not happy with their employer, I disagree.

I've stated I'm not a unionist, but perhaps reading a bit of history of the union movement might claify their need, but that is not the discussion here and I'm not inclined to further discuss the current or future needs for a union. (Nor am I the best choice to do so as I'm more anti-union than pro-union).

 

[Moody]

This thread and issue seems to be a magnet for the more rabid right-wingers on this forum, but I will put my two cents in nonetheless because my skin is equally as thick as some peoples' skulls.

Now I am led to believe that Qantas makes around a $500m profit (or at least it did last year - these things wax and wane). Qantas management have also said that international operations lose about $215m, and need to be offshored/outsourced to operate at a profit.

Now stupid me looks at the big picture and says why does every single Qantas business need to make a profit?

 

[thewinchester]

youtube mainly useful for OS members since viewing of iview is not allowed outside australia...

Joyce being grilled about his salary, does not look comfortable at all

iView isn't, but they still upload programs like Inside Business in real media and windows media streams for podcasting and website access.

And considering an obvious lack of sleep, AJ managed to handle it quite well without much stumbling or going off-point. His media training shone through, he cleared off all the points, answered comprehensibly, and didn't accept the premise of questions he didn't agree with.

It's been a while since I've seen a CEO do that good a job in a press interview, specially during a stressful time. Just look at the disasters of Tony Hayworth (BP USA) and ors during the Deepwater Horizon disaster for examples of how not to do these things.