16 years on from 1989 - what have Australian pilots learned?
So where are we 16 years on from 1989?
I’d like to try a “sanitized” approach from what has been the usual, when the Australian pilots’ Dispute of 1989 has been discussed.
A thread devoid of pilots from each side blaming the other, and looking at it from various aspects of the other players, just for a change.
My personal opinion is that Bob Hawke – the then Labor Prime Minister – sold all four airlines a pup, when he embroiled them in the Dispute.
Whether the brawl was started by a group of greedy pilots, or a Federation directed by its’ members to try to regain the same relative salary position they had held prior to voluntarily committing themselves to Hawke’s Accord is not an issue, this time around.
My belief is that Hawke led the airlines – Ansett, Australian, East-West, and IPEC – into a fight on his behalf, in the belief that the pilot group would be quickly subdued (within a matter of a couple of weeks) at little cost to the airlines, because the Government would bankroll them through that period.
Following their capitulation, the AFAP pilots would no longer be able – for as long as they remained within the Government controlled Accord – to negotiate as freely as they had in the past, and achieve the enviable conditions Australia’s airline pilots enjoyed.
Instead, Hawke led each and every one of those four companies to their demise, because he grossly under-estimated the conviction of the pilots.
Most pilots, I believe, would agree that the pre-1989 airline pilots enjoyed EXTREMELY good conditions, negotiated for them by their union.
Most pilots would also concur, I believe, that the conditions of Australia’s airline pilots today, leave a lot to be desired.
As a UNITED group, the pilot workforce achieved far more for themselves, than is offered in any of the contracts today.
There was more transparency in employer-employee dealings because there was an agreed, established set of guidelines that was monitored and enforced from BOTH sides.
Quite different today, isn’t it!
That’s an opener from me.