Originally Posted by
neville_nobody
Or they were under strict orders not to do anything. Given the number of AIPA Presidents who magically have ended up in QF management my money would not be on they didn't understand what was going on. Blind Freddy could see what was happening but you have to actually want to represent Pilot interests if you want to do something.
I think the number of AIPA Presidents to end up in QF Management over the past 3 or so decades is about 2.
And I don’t think either of them pushed the Association in the direction you have indicated.
Admittedly, the last one was fairly recent, and his movement to management was widely frowned upon.
There was a brief president who didn’t want to expand to represent Group entities around the time of the commencement of Jetstar. He got voted out. Some folks blame him for creating an “us vs them” industrial climate that exists to this day.
However, since it’s formation, AIPA was not permitted to represent other entities, including other Qantas Group entities. The government had a change of policy at some stage (under John Howard I think) and decided to encourage Union competition rather than prohibit it.
I believe a rule change was sought by AIPA in 2005 (under RH). It was opposed by every party under the sun, including AFAP, and of course, Qantas, Jetstar and QantasLink, and I think it took at least a couple of years of legal process to succeed. Since then, AIPA has been able to represent other group entities. Since then, some pilots in group entities have chosen AIPA, some have chosen AFAP, and some have looked at the whole mess and chosen nothing.
AFAP got it’s own back recently by going through a similar process to allow it to represent QF mainline pilots, which was, of course, opposed by AIPA, and interestingly, Qantas.
AFAP succeeded.