few Corrections
re the thais....
The whole batte was lost when we accepted the thai base about 10 years ago without a fight. None of the current or probably even previous FAAA officials were there when that happened.
Previous Union officials have made attempts to unionise the Thais and most of the ones that joined the union were sacked by ADDECCO including the rep that the Union paid about 20,000 AUD pa for.
Thirdly and finally read the FAAA newsletters about the LHR base. When you do you will see that the FAAA had no problem with crew being stationed in LHR or anywhere else and argued that there was a basing provsion in the award that covered it.
The company circumvented that in the same way they did with the thai base and AKL and employed them out of the jurisdiction of the AIRC and the FAAA.
Under the law of the UK, Qantas drew up an agreement with a UK union prior to the announcement of th base. Under British law thats the only union that can deal with Qantas for those workers. The FAAA had no capacity to negotiate. In fact they went to one of the TOP industrial lawyers and firms in the country to look for any avenues to intervene.
The advice was that as they were not employed in australia under australian law the FAAA had no jurisdiction and was therefore unable to negotiate.
Michael Mijatov flew to the UK and met with the union Qantas had chosen and the main BA cabin crew union as well as the UK equivalent. None of the advice taken in the UK and by australian lawyers gave the FAAA any scope to negotiate in the UK and Qantas refused to negitiate in Australia.
Crew themselves took the deal as it was. The one thing the FAAA at least tried to do for those ppl was recognise their seniority when they returned.