Qantas staff 'interrogated' over joke

Geoff Dixon, Margaret Jackson and a union official walk into a bar...

Seriously though, what happened to management's sense of humour? The more they treat QF workers like sh!t, the more their customers suffer through dispirited, unhappy crews. A friend of mine who is a QF pilot said that he and many he worked with have had a gutful of management's belligerent attitude.

 

I don't think that there is enough information to form an real opinion one way or other since there is no details about what the allegation is

Dave

 

There is enough information for me to form the opinion that management's reaction was extraordinarily heavy-handed. This was not about investigating a major safety breach or criminal activity. It was all about a joke told four days earlier! Management's action to line up on the aerobridge while pax are still deplaning so they could board the plane and isolate individual crew members to ask questions is a very heavy-handed response.

 

Why heavy-handed? Surely if you have nothing to hide, what is the issue with "Management" asking you questions?

How do you know that it wasn't about "investigating a major safety breach or criminal activity", and how would "management" know that it wasn't unless they investigated. Someone has obviously logged an issue, and it's only fair that it is investigated.

I think this really demonstrates the problems that Qantas and unions have. It's the real us and them mentality - there is no "management" in business.. it's only a group of people that should be pulling in the same direction.

 

Well if they had the Virgin policy "We Take Jokes Seriously" then I'd be concerned...

 

I agree with

 

I still maintain that there is not enough information to form a valid opinion. Someone seems to have lodged a complaint of some description and it was investigated. Without knowing the full details , how can it be determined if it was heavy handed or not? It could have been a serious issue that was reported and the staff are claiming what was heard /reported was a joke for example.

Dave

 

I agree with you.

 

I am assuming that it that is not normal for management to greet arriving planes in number, take staff aside and question them at length about an incident. This seems like a very serious response to what has been reported as "a joke". That seems heavy-handed to me. Let's see if Qantas now go public with details of any alleged safety/security/criminal breach as they have done in the past.

BTW, no-one with "nothing to hide" enjoys a surprise interrogation.

It was reported as a joke. I doubt that even the union would defend a member if they were involved with a breach of safety requiring management to board a plane upon arrival.

While I agree with the idea that everyone should be pulling in the same direction, management has no-one to blame but itself if this is not the case. It is their job to ensure that this happens by managing people well. If it's not happening then they have failed.

 

I am not taking sides here but without knowing the details of the incident it would be hard to make a judgement call. Maybe management did feel the "joke" was serious enough to want to have surprise interrogation.

If they didn't take these surprise measures and gave the cabin crew notice that they need to explain the incident to management, and the incident is serious enough, then they really have given the crew time to synchronise their stories.

 

Yeah, the mass media are full of cr_p; I scaresly believe any of what they report these days. It could have been an innocent joke or it may not have been a joke at all.

In fact I don't bother to follow local news at all. The greatest truth in todays newspapers is on the comics page & it isn't worth buying the average rag just for that, so I look through a paper only when Qantas gives me a free one! Same goes for TV and radio, I don't bother with it either. Which is funny seeing as this is where my employment comes from.....