AAP
Airline staff may strike over pay
Date: 13/01/05 16:15 AEDT
By Samantha Baden and Amy Coopes
Cabin crew at Australian Airlines could be on strike within a week because of a pay and rostering dispute.
Enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) negotiations between the Flight Attendants Association of Australia (FAAA) and Qantas, the parent company of Australian Airlines, have broken down.
FAAA spokesman Michael Mijatov said a strike may soon be called.
"It could happen as early as next week," Mr Mijatov said.
"We want further discussion with the company to resolve these issues ... we may call those (stopwork) meetings and ask what further action they (the staff) want to take."
The previous EBA ran out on December 31 and the union is attempting to negotiate a new three year deal.
But Qantas accused the FAAA of "holding a gun" to consumers heads, and said they would not concede to the union's demands.
"(The union's) asks are unsustainable and impossible for us to respond to," Qantas' head of corporate communications Kevin Brown told AAP.
"We had understood the union were going to come back and were going to give us some feedback on the position that we had put on the table.
"We set up a meeting and then, somewhat to our surprise, they chose to go out to the media and put a gun to the customer's head, frankly."
While Qantas was hopeful negotiations could resume, Mr Brown said the airline would not concede to Australian Airlines staff demands, including better control of their rosters and a 17 per cent payrise over three years.
"We're not going to give them the payrise they're asking for, we're not going to give them the bidding system where staff determine where they fly and when they fly," he said.
Mr Mijatov said Australian Airlines was the only airline where cabin crew did not have any control over their rosters.
He said the union was also asking for a total eight per cent pay rise for cabin staff as a result of the time zones they must cross on domestic and international flights.
"The other primary issue is that they started out two years ago as a start-up airline and they started up on the basis of using six or seven aircraft, being a one class aircraft," he said.
"The other restriction is that they were only allowed to have four time changes (a shift), and that is to Cairns and WA.
"Now the company wants to lift that restriction so that they can fly anywhere.
"We don't have a problem with that, but with lifting that restriction means that they are obviously concentrating their cabin crew to do more long range kind of work and we say that they should be remunerated accordingly."
Mr Brown said he would not let customers be held hostage by the union.
"I will take whatever steps necessary to ensure that doesn't happen," he said.
"Certainly the rhetoric at the moment says anything but resolution, in the midst of unrealistic demands and, frankly, threatening behaviour towards our customers.
"But I hope commonsense will prevail ... the door is always open."
Approximately 300 cabin crew work for Australian Airlines, which was formed in October 2002 as a Cairns-based budget international airline, carrying passengers between Australia and a range of Asian destinations.
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