This is my first post -
In July 2004 longhaul FAAA senior executives toured the island and held a series of meetings to get a rubber stamp endorsement of action they, in their wisdom, had decided to take over the upcoming EBA. Stop work meetings and serious strike action over the Xmas period after the EBA expiry date of 17/12 were intimated.
Relevant questions were directed to them from the floor.
At those meetings the FAAA executive made it very clear that they WERE NOT AGAINST THE LONDON BASE OPENING – as long as they got what they believed to be an acceptable “cap” and a redundancy clause in place whereby off –shore based crew were sacked before those on the main island.
When asked how many crew were unionised from Jetstar & Australian airlines re-strike breakers, senior union reps became very agitated and said it was 85%, and why were we asking questions like that?
We asked questions like that because the stop work on 28th Feb 2003 was totally ineffective due to non –unionised and scab labor. Both the union, & more importantly the company, knew that strike action was not going to be effective in the future.
Union execs believed the Company could never find 4,000 people to replace us. It was brought to their attention that the Company didn’t need 4,000 on any given day – just a few hundred – the fact that the FAAA did not have firm figure of how many scabs were needed to undermine their industrial action was worrying.
When asked what Plan B was if strike action failed, union execs said there was no plan B that this was a battle to the death and if we lost, then it meant the destruction of our Union.
Doomsdayers and Armageddon believers!!
Very encouraging for those of us with families and mortgages! The industrial relations officer present said that “at worst, you’ll lose maybe 3 days pay!” Yeh, right, and the Company won’t come back to the table with an agenda of revenge – “see those conditions being offered in London –they are now the norm for SYD – here’s your individual contract – just sign here!”
This present group of FAAA executives has a known track record of their inability to engage in sustained negotiations (they pride themselves on the fact that they physically walked (stormed?) out of the last EBA negotiation meetings with the Company.
The London Base was a legitimate offer made to Australian based Qantas employees.
It’s why we allowed the Base Clause in back in the 1980s so we could all live the London Dream of the late 1970s. (Did crew jump up & down back them when LHR obviously took away SYD based flying? Where are the old chief’s stories when you need them?) Obviously the conditions are tougher – but we are no longer a government run airline.
The Union bureaucrats were asked at the meetings if they would consider negotiating improved conditions on the proposed LHR base and then FILLING IT FULL OF AUSTRALIAN CREW.
They indicated that they wouldn’t be lifting a finger to assist the paid up FAAA members who were considering the LHR offer.
COMMON SENSE SAYS -“FOR EVERY AUSSIE F/A THAT TAKES A POSITION IN LHR – THEN ITS ONE LESS UK NATIONAL THAT TAKES AN AUSTRALIAN JOB!
When it was suggested that this was really about SYD based flying and the loss of SYD based allowances and long range penalties, again Union reps became very defensive.
The LHR base was always going to go ahead and most reasonable members know this. It was a valid business decision made by the company. Just like the closing of Athens, Rome, and Paris – unpopular with crew but necessary for the business to remain profitable.
THE CAP IS CRAP!
It is a band-aid solution that was applied way too late – the horse had bolted. Where was all this righteous indignation and threats of militant industrial action when BKK & AKL bases opened?????
For months we sat around and let Greg bee tell us it was for language requirements
The BKK & AKL bases are an abomination and need to be closed as they are indeed taking Australian jobs away from Australians.
The FAAA rolled over big time on this one – and we all accepted it.
Again many crew who have been around for a while – actually voted on allowing the base clause into our EBAs (believing naively of course that we would be going onto those bases.)
The LHR base won’t suit everyone – (mortgages, kids at school etc) – but it is attractive to many –and would have been eagerly sought –if the union had got off its arse and negotiated better conditions for it.
Instead the senior FAAA executive have done a terrific imitation of an OSTRICH STICKING HIS HEAD IN THE SANDS OF SUSSEX STREET AND SAYING “ITS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN…….ITS Not..going to…happen…..please tell me its not going to happen……….
If we didn’t want bases we should never have let PER &MEL start either – they have taken away much of SYDs flying – just wait till we realize just how much good flying the BNE base will pinch off SYD
The latest scare tactic by the FAAA – is that promotional paths may be compromised by LHR based crew returning to Australia with CSS &CSM experience - this is extremely rich coming from FAAA executives who got their CSM “red coats “ by back-dooring the upgrade process by going onto the MEL base to achieve their promotions! Hypocrisy has no bounds!
The FAAA needs to re- invent itself. This is not industrial England in the nineteenth century with kids in coal mines. Neither is it the adversarial industrial times of the 1970s the ghosts of Keith Stephens and Gary McGraw still seem to hover over this Union.
Times have changed and a different approach to industrial relations is required.
Old models of industrial disputation are no longer useful.
The Company is in profit and there is much on the table for the FAAA to grab.
As shown by the behaviour of senior management & the non – executive directors at the 2004 AGM, they are getting in for their chop and there’s no reason –with the right team leading the FAAA – which we can’t continue to get our well deserved slice of the pie.
Cabin crew conceded an alleged $A40 productivity gain for the Company with the de-crewing business initiative and the setting up of the LHR will save the company in the vicinity of $18-27m. There is plenty of pie on the table which has been put there by cabin crew – and it is our right and fair to get a large portion of this back in our base salaries and conditions.
Over the last ten years we as a Union have achieved – BUGGER ALL!!.
We willing put in the Base clause which was cunningly exploited by Greg Bee &Co.
We allowed BKK & AKL to open with foreign nationals without a whimper.
We allowed our A/C to be de- crewed by one operator with no real financial compensation.
We allowed an unsupervised J/C bar to come into operation with no opposition (a directive printed on a red piece of paper put the fear of god into marketing management – not!!)
We allowed the divisional structure to disappear and short haul take over our longhaul airbus flying without a murmur.
We allowed Australian Airlines to take our Bali flights without so much as a “by your leave!”
Change is the only constant in this aviation job.
The LHR initiative will hurt some SYD based crew financially – but its always been dangerous basing your pay on allowances (fully expendable in the slip port) and long range allowances which were in place to compensate the f/a for an arduous tour of duty (the removal of the route takes a burden off the f/a as well as the need to pay the allowance.)
Some of us thought we could see our days out living at R5 with no need to go for promotion and subsequent pay and super rises. Unfortunately this one is coming back to bite many of us on the arse when we realize that after 20 years flying , you’re actually still only on a year 7 f/a salary!
There are many that wish it was still 1989 and we were all standing in the lower lobe, Midnight Oil blaring on the CD speakers, having a beer on our way to the 100 hr slip in Tahiti, toasting just how great this job is!
Times have changed, businesses have evolved, hard decisions have to be made, and the “good old days” are a fading image best left for re- unions at Bondi.
The next FAAA executive needs to be a lot smarter than the last few executives we have voted in. For many years now – IT’S BEEN AMATEUR HOUR AT THE FAAA.
Yes, at times it’s a thankless job –requiring many long hours – and there have been many dedicated sincere contributors to this worthwhile cause. (But –like those strange creatures on QCCC level 4 –it has suited the lifestyles of members who don’t really get along with passengers and other crew at close quarters (or who put family life & second businesses before the actual job of long range flying).
BKK & AKL – must eventually be closed down. These are foreign nationals taking Australian jobs. A long term, negotiated settlement should be a priority (the Company knows if it wishes to continue to trade on the Spirit of Australia, this base trend must stop). The bases could be phased out over the life of the next two EBAs. Again – cabin crew have put $60 -70 million worth of savings on the table through the de-crewing & LHR base and we deserve to man our own bases. (BKK &AKL were Strong &Bee’s babies – Mr Dixon with his –“Still Call Aust. Home “& Spirit of Aust. theme knows that overseas nationals are unacceptable as cabin crew if the brand is to remain credible.)
The LHR base offer should have been supported by the FAAA and actively filled with Aussies to ensure it never gets out of our control. Instead by ensuring the offer was only taken up by “the few” (I wouldn’t call 200 applications –“a few”) the FAAA has allowed the Company to place 280 UK nationals into Australian job slots.
They will now turn around to the media and say – “we offered these guys salaries of up to $A90, 000 to go live in London for 2 yrs and they knocked us back”
Yep, Mark Latham’s “aspirational” voters on $35,000 will get right behind the battling f/as of Qantas…so too will the other 35,000 employees of Qantas who believe that cabin crew are the hardest done by bunch in the organization…….
We need a reality check. There are plenty of Jim’s mowing franchises and jobs at our local RSL club pulling beer if we don’t like our conditions at 39,000 ft. That’s not to say we don’t fight for REASONABLE conditions & pay.
It’s the WAY we fight that’s the issue here.
Meanwhile, the punitive, petulant and immature threat of the FAAA to not only suspend – but also actively destroy the seniority of those paid up FAAA members going to LHR – ensures that they have alienated many loyal supporters. I can assure you; the first impulse on returning to Australia will not be ringing the Sussex St office and signing up again to be led by a bunch of pseudo- tough boys.
Mindless industrial militancy and strike threats are not the course of action we need to be taking in 2005. The FAAA has to become more sophisticated and professional if it is to successfully take on the might of corporate Qantas.
This crew of Union officials do not have a mandate to destroy the FAAA. Rumour has it they were elected as a “protest” vote against the poor handling of the last EBA. As usual, thanks to the well known complacency and apathy of cabin crew, most of us took our eye off the ball to allow these people into the Union office.
That’s the beauty of a democracy – there is freedom of choice. We don’t have to be bullied by Union thugs.
Yes, there is strength in solidarity and staying united. Divided we may find it harder to negotiate. But when a couple of blokes with their own personal agenda –savoring the sense of power and their fifteen minutes of fame – decide to take a once representative union down a ruinous road of destruction – then its time for some loyal members to look at what’s good for them & their families and make the appropriate, individual decisions.