Lame, in reply to your original question, yes, we would be prepared to take a pay cut. Other colleagues also think that it would be better to be paid less and have a job rather than be unemployed. At this stage though, it looks likes things have gone to far. What really pisses us off is when the company goes and buys $100,000 cars for their execs. like they recently did. We're always asked to give more and more but rarely get a thankyou from upper management. Most of the loads always appear to be full (with minimal sub load passengers) and nobody seems to know why they are losing so much. It has nothing to do with pilot wages either as they are getting the pilots at around half price as against pre 1989 (and I'm not having a go at anyone, just stating the facts). Pilots wages represent around 2% of the value of a ticket. Sure, there probably are outdated work practices in some of the unionised areas like baggage handlers being paid $80,000 but that is around a sixty hour week.
Unfortunately, it looks like the real damage has been done by prior owners, prior management, the Air New Zealand's boards ego, the Keating government, the Howard government, the Foreign Investment Review Board and the worst offenders would have to be that useless, lazy, incompetent New Zealand government.
When Toomey came on board, he gave us all a ray of hope but it looks like the problem has gone too far.
My feeling is that Ansett will exist in some form or other, possibly under another name, in a more efficient form, basically starting from scratch. With due respect to Compass, this country cannot afford to lose any business, let alone one the size of Ansett. The economy would suffer too much. Sure someone would probably pick up the scraps but there would be too much tax revenue lost, unemployment benefits would sky rocket, tourism would suffer with a resultant loss of jobs, rural Australia would suffer, the banks would lose millions of dollars in loans to Ansett and mortgage defaults, other business's would collapse. All up, not a very good situation.
As an Ansett employee, the stress is unbelievable, I am losing sleep and it is not happy at home as we face the unknown.
Please, to all you pre 1989 guys (of which I am not one) do not sling off at this post as no doubt you all felt exactly as I do now back then.