Originally Posted by
dr dre
It’s not an exact precedent for this situation (nothing ever is) but it is an example of when the Industrial Relations Commission in 2002 sided with a company over a union over the issue of seniority “having regard to likely additional costs and disruption in the context of presently tenuous airline operations” (those words from the AIRC decision). Just after Ansett collapsed there were then “tenuous” airline operations in Australia, as there are now. It involved a court case over actions outside of strict seniority, and the court did side with the company over the union citing prohibitive costs.
But I don’t think this line would be perused in court, I think if it did end up in court it’ll come down to what is written in current agreements.
And again, I firmly believe no CR will be required at all. The package is pretty generous enough and I think it’ll be oversubscribed.
The Court ‘sided’ with the Administrator. Not the Company. They were already in administration. The main finding was that the redundancy provisions effectively meant that no pilot could be made redundant ever. Therefore a decision had to be made. It was the poorly written redundancy provisions that brought them undone.