Originally Posted by
A little birdie
I’m not a lawyer. I’m not a union strategist. I don’t know what options are available but the AFAP and JQ pilots have chosen this option so it’s not unreasonable to ask ‘will this PIA achieve what JQ pilots are trying to achieve’ and ‘what is Qantas history of responding to this sort of PIA’ and ‘what happens if they respond as they have in the past’?
I’ll try:
1. “will this PIA achieve what JQ pilots are trying to achieve”?
It may achieve nothing, It may achieve part of what they are trying to achieve, It may achieve all of what they are trying to achieve. Absolutely impossible to predict, because doing so would imply knowledge of the future actions of both parties as it plays out dynamically. If you were observing a house sale, and the vendor wanted $600K and the buyer wanted it for $400K, and the buyer threatened to walk away and buy another house, can you predict the outcome? Of course not, it depends not only on what both parties hope to achieve, but also on how it plays out. Bluff can play a significant role. If both parties need an eventual outcome, it can come down to all sorts of things. Can you starve out the opponent? Will someone else come along with a better offer? Will your opponent get a better offer? Will the opponent beat you down psychologically through battle fatigue by calling you daily pretending they have a better offer? The house could end up selling for $400K or $600K or anywhere in between, or in the extreme example, the buyer ended up paying $700 because the vendor knew how to play the psychological game (or $300K if the buyer did).
2. “what is Qantas history of responding to this sort of PIA”?
Qantas has a long history of battling PIA from unions. They have a heavily unionised workforce. They have spent decades trying to reduce the impact of unions. The very existence of Jetstar is a prime example. Jetstar evolved from Dixon’s purchase of Impulse, which was not only non-union, but the pilots weren’t even employed by Impulse. What better compliant workforce to start with! He ended up having to put the pilots on the books because he knew Qantas could not possibly continue to get away with that scam under the spotlight that shines of QF, but he went to great lengths and expense to discourage any unionism of those pilots (short of actually paying and treating them well). He and his right hand mate AJ who he put in charge of JQ had the same opinion of pilots, and nearly two decades later, look who’s still in charge. There were those back in the day who understood Dixon thought pilots should earn train driver pay, and those who think that was the good old days because Joyce thinks they should earn less than that.
Where am I going with this? Well I am answering your question. Qantas has a long history of PIA, and dealing with it. I’ve provided the background of why they won’t treat pilots any differently from any other workforce who engages in PIA, because they don’t consider the pilot workforce to be any different from the staff who replace the toilet roll in the executive washroom. In fact, lower, because the washroom staff fold the toilet rolls in nice 45degree corners purely for AJ’s pleasure, and he probably assumes correctly that no pilot would do that for him, even for $300,000 per year.
In terms of recent history of PIA from pilots? No recent history from JQ in my knowledge. In 2011 they responded to mainline with a lockout but that was ended by the government before the lockout started, so no-one was locked out. The threat affected some staff psychologically, but the end result was a basic 3% determination by the FWC. It didn’t have to be a determination, take note. It only became a determination because mandatory arbitration could not reach a deal. There were three unions “locked out” at that time, the other two were the LAMES and I think the AWU. Those other unions reached an arbitrated deal prior to a determination. At the end of the day, there was no negative for the pilots other than that they did not achieve the workplace security clauses they were taking PIA over. Pretty much the rest of their EBA claims happened anyway.
So Qantas got slammed by the general public for screwing up the nation for a week, it cost them hundreds of millions of dollars, they lost a lot of face with government (of whom many MP’s also got stuck), and they ended up with an EBA for the same dollars they started with, but without the job security clauses the unions were asking for (read: security against future outsourcing).
Conclusion: this is how much the Company are (or were) prepared to pay to keep their options open for future outsourcing.
3. “what happens if they respond as they have in the past’?”
Well, in the past they have either returned to the negotiation table or conducted a lockout and endured an unsuccessful arbitration which led to a determination. A determination is unlikely to leave JQ pilots worse off, particularly considering where they are coming from. In the light of the latest Tiger EBA, a determination could well work in their favour, but that would be up to the FWC.
Birdie, I hope I have answered your questions.
Both parties start to take strategic risks at this point, the outcome is unknown, but the legal risks are quantifiable by law if both parties play fair.