Stubby jumbo,
Thanks for your comments. In Relation to the other unions like FARSA and the Thai Collective and the London Base i would say the following.
There is regular dialogue and meetings between the officials except for the thais.
An attempt was made my previous officials to organise the thai base and the FAAA paid about 24K pa to a thai based flight attendant to help organise them.
It would appear that the person in question didnt have her contract renewed and was isolated. The strategy of the FAAA under previous management was to help them raise their conditions so as to be less of a threat to long Haul.
The thais and the kiwi's are not stupid. They know that the only reason that they have the jobs that they do is because of the significant cost savings thaat qantas derives from using them.
In New Zealand FARSA is not interested in helping Australian Based long Haul crew to the detriment of their own members. They are actively negotiated to ensure career path and promotion for them and better conditions, but are mindful of not pushing too hard and becoming less attractive.
They negotiated CSM and CSS positions for NZ based crew in the last agreement as they believe that their members are entitled to promostion too.
That would impact significantly on LH crew promotion and could potentially mean that AKL/LAX/NYC/SFO flying could be all Kiwi based crew (many australian) with onboard managers too.
The next EBA for Long Haul crew will be potentially the most complex ever undertaken by officials. There are now 3 employment lawyers on the staff of the FAAA as well as A senior barrister who works closely with them. The officials that will work with the paid staff will be some of the most experienced in the history of the FAAA.
Some have suggested getting a professional negotiator. can i just say that Geoff would tell Bob HAwke to get F***ed as quickly as MM.
As far as i am concerned, everything that we currently earn, and every benefit is important. OH&S will play a strong part in this EBA and any changes to work rules etc will have significant OH&S implications.
If we could guarantee that no other F/A in the group would come in and undercut us to get our flying and ensure their job security it would be a great thing. Sadly that is unlikely to be the case as we live in a world of dog eat dog and looking after no1.
There is a lot of work going on with the unions working together to defeat the current government and change the IR laws. That will at least bring some fairness back to the system.
But we cant count on a Labor win at the federal election and have to be prepared for what may head our way.
The Unions in the USA that have been successful are the ones that have a relationship with management. They are the ones at the table rather than knocking on the door.
the best example of that is the old AFAA and AICCA. The AFAA was considered the soft option by many crew, but at the end of the day they were the union that the company chose to deal with and we lost 75% home base leave and got a bid system of sorts.
The days of those sorts of conditions are long gone and the thing of legend like when the water came up to the hotel bar in Bahrain.
We live in a very different world now and the conditions of the 70's are foreign to every non government airline in the world.
The private airlines like us without the govt support and public service mentality in management and employees are a cut throat place to work and bargain in