It came close in around 2017, I was at a meeting were some very senior managers said that Joyce wanted Group Seniority to address retention of pilots. The proposal was a Group List where you are ranked on your date of joining, whenever ANY entity needed to recruit then the positions would be advertised internally and allocated via the Group Seniority number.
Only when all positions were allocated could roles be advertised externally to fill the gaps that were left. It would have resulted in ALL mainline jobs going to internal candidates ( probably) and all jobs into the group via the ‘less’ popular group companies. Advantage would have been certainty of movement for internal candidates and certainty of career path for new join externals I.e may have to start in Network but I know I will have access to other opportunities.
That was as far as it it went because guess what, it got shot down by Mainline unions and the company dropped the idea in favour of the current system. Sometimes we are our own worst enemies, simple as that.
I was also at a meeting where the head of AIPA shot down supporting a Jetconnect court case for equal pay to the mainline pilots as it was their position not to support any pilot flying a Qantas Branded Aircraft unless they were employed on the Mainline contract. So you can call me sceptical if you like but I have seen AIPA give the middle finger to group pilots on a number of occasions where there may have been some significant benefits for the group at nil cost to the Mainline Award. Now this isn’t exclusive to Qantas, it is a sign that Qantas’ IR strategy has worked perfectly when one union won’t cooperate with another as a matter of principal.
Last edited by Ollie Onion; 7th Feb 2023 at 21:36.