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8 December 2006
Attention all Qantas Long Haul and Australian Airlines Flight Attendants
FAAA INTERNATIONAL DIVISION PUTS FORWARD PLAN FOR FAAA INTEGRATION
I wish to advise members that the International Division yesterday formally responded to the Domestic/Regional Division with a plan to form the basis for integration of the current two Divisions of the FAAA.
I take this opportunity to publicly inform our membership that in late 2003, I (Michael Mijatov) initiated confidential discussions between senior officials of the International Division and our senior counterparts in the Domestic/Regional Division of the FAAA.
Once I became the Secretary of the International Division in March 2004, the discussions had the formal imprimatur of this Division and it has been the policy of this Division to attempt to reverse the Divisionalisation of the FAAA that occurred in 2000.
It is self evident that an integrated FAAA structure would have benefits for all FAAA members both in industrial terms and in terms of a more effective, efficient and more financially secure FAAA.
However, I above all current elected officials in both Divisions of the FAAA witnessed the debilitating instability, arguments and resentment that ultimately caused the de-facto split of the FAAA in 2000.
Therefore, we in this Division of the FAAA, believe that it is both prudent and essential that certain matters have to be agreed to, before there can be a full “union” between the two FAAA Divisions. The most important of these are as follows:-
The FAAA must be structured in a way that the legitimate interests of members in each airline grouping are acknowledged in the Rules of the FAAA.
Industrial decisions made by each airline grouping must not be able to be thwarted, blocked or overridden by a coalition of officials from other airline groupings.
Election to and voting on, elective bodies in the FAAA must be on the basis of proportional representation (for example it would be unacceptable that almost 3000 Qantas Long Haul members have the same representation on a newly constituted FAAA as would another group of flight attendants with say 600 members).
Many of these issues are complex, but must be properly addressed, to ensure that if we do restructure the FAAA, we do it on a proper basis, to prevent the chaos of pre- 2000 recurring.
We have also indicated to the Domestic/Regional Division that if full re-integration is not possible we are keen to adopt a whole raft of other practical measures which would have the effect of closer industrial co-ordination. We also indicated that sharing of premises would also be possible as far as our Division is concerned, even if full integration is not practical or possible.
We will advise you of developments in due course.
Written and authorised by Michael Mijatov – Secretary International Division.