What are unions actually able to do? Outside protected industrial action there is virtually ZERO scope to have any meaningful leverage by virtue of Federal Industrial Relations law.
Is that AIPA's position? Has that been communicated to members?
We fail to see how a binary decision regarding the Jetconnect model as detailed in Fair Work February 2011, stipulated that control was not Qantas' is not somewhat different in the present.
Given the aircraft are now returned to Qantas without a lease payment ever being made (or even being entered in the statutory accounts) it is ipso facto sufficient for Fair Work to revisit the notion of 'control'. If anything, doing nothing will only embolden the management.
If Jetconnect was something then, it is the other something now
Are the angels working on the weekend?
However, the problem with price controls is they usually result in a shortage of the suppressed good or item as no producer will willingly voluntarily undertake production at below the risk/reward cost for any length of time. Stockpiles are diminished, this masks the reality, and once they are exhausted they are not replenished. This equates to observed reality for pilots.
Having sent the wrong signals to the market for years, there are insufficient pilots. Demographics is the best bet there is, Qantas are posturing as they know this too.
You can almost expect some sort of an IR war as the cancellations in the MAINLINE fleet rise.
The drum is beating, again.