bitter balance you raise an interesting point with your statement, "
Geoff Dixon is not there to work for his employees... for the board and by extension the shareholders.".
Interestingly enough, I had intended to raise this very issue when I next posted, by asking, "To whom should Mr Dixon weight his responsibilities - the QF employees, or the shareholders?"
So exactly who ARE the shareholders?
Can they be defined as one constant, defined group? Or are they an ever changing, indistinct, multiplex?
Do shareholders have any loyalty to a company? Or are they basically, purely reward/profit driven?
Are shareholders individually able to
directly influence the base source of revenue for the company on a day to day basis?
Would a 100% turnover of shareholders in say a 12 month period, affect the earning potential for QF during that time?
Now ask the same questions, replacing "shareholders" with "employees".
Let's be quite honest - 1 or 2 p!ssed off Mum & Dad shareholders are not going to have ANY effect on a company the size of QANTAS - the same cannot be said of employees.
QANTAS employees are, right now, feeling insecure - and this is being reflected in
Virgin Blue's increasing market share.
An analogy I'd like to make, which I feel fits the current QF shake-up, is that as Dixon cuts up the QANTAS cake into smaller pieces, a few crumbs are lost each time - these crumbs end up on
VB's plate.
Each smaller piece of cake now exposes more area (than the original whole) which is vulnerable to attack.
Flight crew and maintenance staff are easily identifiable, per aircraft, fixed costs, eg. 1xB737 = 2 pilots, 3 cabin crew, 1 LAME, minimum, thereby making easily identifiable "targets" in any cost-cutting. Other ground staff such as check-in, loaders, schedulers, etc, are able to be shared over several aircraft and are hence less easily cost definitive.
Even less so are non-revenue producing office staff, whose cost to the company can be written off across the entire fleet.
Anyway, one step at a time.
Where should Dixon's responsibilities primarily be channeled?
IMO, he is acting AGAINST QANTAS' best interests by screwing the staff - but with a million or two $$'s more under his belt from performance bonuses, will he really care by the time the sh!t hits the fan?