Well of course if there was some level of trust and cooperation between all Qantas employees, including Jetstar and its management, and its Board, it might be possible to make some cost saving changes in a relatively painless manner.
Pay freezes, profit sharing schemes, stock options immediately come to mind. Then of course there are the mindless wastes of money that certain posters have talked about as well as highly unimaginitive marketing and human resources policies.
However with a rigid management structure, and a Board that doesn't appear to be filled with the greatest talent on the planet, its probably no surprise that "they" have adopted a "divide and rule" strategy.
However, I don't think thats going to work either, perversely because Dixon hasn't thumped the Qantas workforce hard enough - yet. Incremental cost reductions don't work in such situations, you get too much resistance.
The old joke "if it aint broke don't fix it" has another part to it "If you need to fix it, break it first and then fix it." There is an organisational behaviour concept about how management and corporate culture goes through a "freeze, unfreeze, then freeze" cycle.
The structure of a company is generally frozen, change in this state is difficult. If the organisation gets a big enough shock, its culture "unfreezes" and change is not only regarded as possible, but desirable. After a while (maybe a year) the culture freezes again.
Best example I know was Jeff Kennets whirlwind reorganising of Victoria's Government when he was elected. The state was broke and in shock. Nobody offered more than token resistance to his changes, asset sales, sackings whatever. Of course he forgot about the "refreezing" thing.
My guess is that Qantas will continue its long slow, painful descent until at some stage sufficient shock is applied to allow its entire hidebound structure to be shaken up.