Originally Posted by
gordonfvckingramsay
You forgot to mention outsourcing of most of the airline peripheral services and most of it's regional flying to non QANTAS group companies, sometimes below what it would really cost to maintain. Some of those contractors are skimping on EBA provisions, wonder why that would be. Also EOD and the exponential rise in deferred defects being carried on many red tailed aircraft that didn't happen once.
Anyone who thinks that is a good way to run a business is clearly in on the scam. She's gutted sadly!!
Airline fundamentals are fundamental for a reason: They ensure longevity. A big component of CEO responsibility enshrined in statute necessitates foresight to remove strategic risk, thereby protecting the funds on whose behalf you act; the shareholder.
IR is where he’s made his impact. Pitting company against subsidiary, subsidiary against subsidiary to yield desired effect. The good running of Qantas as a single entity is clearly not his sole focus, thus we have the illustrious Qantas Group - comprising of a number of subsidiaries able to be cut/disbanded, practically free of what he’d consider suffocating IR issues. For this I think he is remunerated albeit, disproportionately and not commensurate. He is like that fart you dropped in an elevator, rank and tends to linger.
That is a valid observation.
When one takes a step back and looks at Qantas it has failed this responsibility by deferring fleet decisions and heavily focusing on labour unit cost reductions (IR/HR)
It has also failed to anticipate, prepare for and execute a strategy to counter the obvious industry wide pilot shortage. It either willfully ignored or lacks the institutional foresight to see a clear strategic risk to the business: A lack of qualified and appropriate pilots. This strategic failure is axiomatic. That failure is his.
Whether Mr Joyce has any self reflection is a matter for himself. He however had a real opportunity to steer Qantas in a different direction, A aviation light board, with a industrial head kicker and aviation light weight as the Chair, perhaps Mr Joyce grabbed his opportunity and embraced a way of running a company better suited to rocks and mining, than people and dynamic risk. For a man so preoccupied with inclusion and acceptance, Qantas is a poor model. Sadly, he has little to show, personal fortune aside.
Ask anyone at Southwest about Herb Kelleher and their feelings are almost universal: His respect for people, his responsibility for their well being is reciprocal, each employee values the company as if it is their own.
Ironically for companies like Qantas, hell bent on division, fear and anxiety driven compliance, this adversarial approach costs far more than genuine concern for the people that make the company.
Mr Joyce would not venture far from Coward street (pun intended) without a security detail. That for him is a sad testament to a decade (almost) 'running' the company