Isn't AFAP the outfit that convinced its members to drink the Kool-Aid and resign en masse in 1989?
Correct,
The then President of AIPA addressed a mass meeting of AFAP in Melbourne, trying to dissuade AFAP from taking on Bob Hawke and Co. head on. He literally had rotten fruit thrown at him, and was booed off the stage.
Sadly, but quite predictably, everything that said AIPA President forecast, came to pass.
The AFAP "logic" of "The Government can't do 1,2,4,4 and we will win" became the Government did "1,2,3,4" and the AFAP lost, with a huge personal and monetary toll to all involved, promising careers by the hundreds, thousands, summarily cancelled by AFAP.
The vitriol against all AIPA members was disgusting, because we (AIPA Qantas pilots) refused to "go out" in sympathy.
Fact is we had no sympathy for such idiotic industrial behavior. We could all read industrial history, we understood the logic of the Hawke/Kelty "Wages accord". We knew that pilot bashing, like doctor bashing, was always fodder for the popular media, no support there.
We knew the domestics were on a hiding to nothing, you didn't need to be Einstein.
Thank goodness there was not the "social media" of today, because you see in some of the posts in this thread, all the animosity of '89 lives on.
I started off as a member of the NSW branch, transferred to OSB when I got a job with Qantas, and didn't originally support the split, but was one of a group who wanted to reform AFAP along the lines of US ALPA. However, our proposal went nowhere due to the complete imbalance of voting in the AFAP constitution, the complete dominance of the domestics. Of course, my group's views were based on the point that having one union, not two, was the obviously better position, industrially.
In the end, I supported the split, because we had no choice, operating in an international competitive market we understood that QANTAS could not afford the grossly excessive costs of AFAP operational restriction. Costs just lumped on the long suffering passengers under the "two airline agreement" cost plus domestic arrangement.
Not to mention, the fact that flying in the real world, we had no fear, indeed welcomed, technological change, for far to many in Australian domestic aviation, change is anathema.
I trust this proposal goes nowhere, I hope AIPA does not have to spend a fortune to defend their position, because that would be waste, but they have the funds, and, I am sure, the will, to do whatever is necessary to defend AIPA and its member's interests.
Tootle pip!!