Qantas overtime ban.
Print Email . .Sat, Feb 2 2002 8:09 AM AEDT
ABC News
Workers stood down as talks continue. . . .Qantas industrial dispute may affect flights
Qantas says its industrial dispute with maintenance workers may start to affect flights soon.
The airline has stood down hundreds of workers in Melbourne and Sydney - 450 Melbourne-based workers were stood down and 200 in Sydney.
The workers have had a ban on overtime since September, as part of their long running dispute over a Qantas wage freeze.
The AMWU and the AWU say this will only see the dispute escalate.
Manager of aircraft operations at Qantas David Forsyth says the workers will not be able to return on Monday unless overtime bans are lifted.
He says the bans will soon affect the airline's operations.
"There's a lot of work for us to do there and probably in fact too much work for us to do with our existing resources," he said.
"So we are quite strapped at the moment and we need everybody at work working normally."
Qantas says it will stop standing workers down when they start doing overtime again.
. .The above quote does seem somewhat ludicrous. The workers refuse to do overtime; the company say they are really busy and need the workers to do more hours so they STAND THEM DOWN until they agree to lift overtime bans.
Doesn't that result in less WORK being done?