"The floggings will continue until morale improves" seems like airline management strategy at the moment.
Judging by the posts on this and other forums, it appears that airine management is engaged in a race to the bottom.
Nobody appears to be investing in staff training. There is an assumption that staff can be expected to pay for their own training or ratings.
There is an assumption that Asian workforces can be used to cut costs through outsourcing.
There is an assumption that pilots, engineers and flight attendants are overpaid and underworked.
There is an assumption that there is an inexhaustible stream of good quality recruits just waiting to get their hands on a jet. Therefore staff are replaceable.
The size of the cashflows in RPT aviation together with profit related bonus schemes for senior management make it very tempting to test each of the above assumptions.
However, my take on it (from a safe distance) is as follows.
Forcing staff to pay for training or ratings removes any moral or ethical connection between the employer and employee. In effect the airline is saying "we are not going to invest in you" which is tantamount to saying "You don't matter, your recognition is your monthly paycheck."
The downside of this is the risk of more employee turnover. Furthermore recruiting staff DOES cost big money, yet the cost burden has been shifted from the bonus conscious operational side to the administrative costs side.
Then there is the assumption that pilots, engineers and flight attendants are underworked and overpaid.
That is going to be tested in the most unethical and downright illegal manner by killing passengers.
The first crash involving a chain of pilot fatigue, engineering defects and botched cabin crew procedures will be blamed on the staff concerned.
So will the second one.
It will only be after the third one where it becomes obvious from a royal commission that the workloads and expectations are just too high, and the safety margins are just too low, that change will begin - however the managers responsible for the crash, who cut things to the bone, will have long since taken their cash bonuses and left.
You think I'm joking Possums? Consider this: just suppose Ansett had had a little more cash, that a certain engineer
had been on a bonus scheme and had shut up about a missed AD, and the regulator (CASA) had been just a little more tolerant? Just imagine that AN had been able to soldier on for another six months, while the cracks in the pylons and tailplane bracketry got bigger?
Have you read the report about AN's maintenance system and the defects in those 767's?
How about separation of an engine or, worse still the tail?
Finally there is the assumption that Asian workforces are going to save big money? Exactly how? For my money, I have yet to be convinced that when the demands of a maintenance system meet an Asian culture head on, that the maintenance system is going to win.
Thats what annoys me. Cost cutting is going to only end one way - with a lot of people dead.