I personally have no idea who signed off on the Thai base. I actually dont think it was any union official the company just did it because they could. I think what the union did from memory was negotiate some sort of cap to limit it.
I think that the FAAA bagged the !!!! out of the london base and arranged the most prolific media campaign ever seen in australia . At the end of the day not only were the public not interested ( all they want is cheap airfares and imported cheap plasma TV's) but there were about 50% of flight attendants, mostly females that were not preparedd to take any form of industrial action whatsoever.
Originally i think that as the FAAA could not regulate the conditions of the London base or stop it legally because the CAP would be gone completely, they tried to discourage crew from going and supporting the establishment of the base by giving them crew who were experienced.
Once again the difficulty arose when the domestic division of the FAAA agreed to give returming crew their seniority. THis once again undermined the position of the LOng Haul division. From memory the dilemma became when those crew return short haul crew would get seniority and long haul crew wouldnt. Once again another group of dissaffected crew within our ranks. Additionally there would be no incentive on return to Rejoin all of us in the FAAA as they would feel that the FAAA and the rest of the division had deserted them. More infighting and more ingredients in the pot of the constant round of divide and conquer.
As far as how would the company set up a union ...lets just look at what happened at AIR NZ. A current senior manager at Qantas said to the CSMS there well FARSA your union is not really looking after you as they should be . YOu as managers should be able to get a better deal out of the Company. Why dont you set up your own association and we will help you and we can negotiate directing with you and bypass your union ( FARSA).
So like selfish naieve little sheep that's what they did they formed their own union and loa and behold after they got a nice contract and fu**** over the other ranks in the process, when the contract expired the divide and conquer had worked and then they turned on the CSMs and screwed them too.
There are CSM's and F/A's in our ranks that will kill their parents to go to the orphans picnic, and think that the FAAA should be doing more for the CSM's. I personally think its a recipe for disaster for us all and i for one will do whatever i can to keep us as united as possible.
There are some extremely challenging things in the new IR laws for us all , and some of the provisions of our current EBA will no longer even be enforceable.
We are in a precarious position right now and think the key to survival is going to be flexibility more than anything else.
I think over the years we have had some good officials who have been on various teams of the union over the years and personally i think its time to stop looking backwards at who did what and aportioning blame and start looking forward and that goes for the current officials as well as past ones.
I believe its about mutual respect for each others ideas. we may not agree with the process or like it, we may not all agree with each others ideas but we have to start at least respecting peoples views as long as they are constructive