Captain F,
You are spot on!
All we hear from management is how tough the market is, how tough the airline is doing it, and how high our labour costs are. In other words, QF staff are just a drain on the beloved shareholder's bottom line - nothing more. A throwaway thanks at Christmas time and a free pocket diary just don't cut it IMO.
You can only hear so much of this before it begins to affect how you feel about your employers (who incidentally are usually reaping huge bonuses from the company's record performance)!!
So if the QF F/As are finding it harder to smile when their conditions are continualy under scrutiny then it does not surprise me at all. Sadly, if this trend continues, it will just give management even more ammunition in wanting to remove them for cheaper (foreign based?) cabin crew.
PS - I would take a lot of what Crikey says with a grain of salt. I remember a few months back, a Crikey report about commuting QF cabin crew getting FREE flights to travel to work. Complete bollocks and indicative of an organisation with an anti-QF (and particularly anti-QF cabin crew) bent.
