Crank - It is good to hear some other opinions and I'm glad you have been reading with interest. It is time to accept change and make the airline even more profitable and some facts about Perth engineering need to be highlighted for all readers.
Qantas have hired the ace team from the US called Seabury to identify savings. They spent 4 months and worked out a 10.9 hour roster could save the airline 1.9m in Perth. The workers exercised their right to refuse the roster and were threatened with an 8 hour roster unless they changed their minds. They didn't and the 8 hour roster was enforced.
The 8 hour roster is undermanned and unsafe levels of staff are working the tarmac. The AIRC requested the union to put together another option. It took them 3 weeks to work out another roster that saved the airline 2.6m per year. The airline won't allow the roster because it would prove that the Seabury nutters don't have the answers and the union do.
Every excuse has been used by management to discredit the union roster. They claim it fails a fatigue risk assessment (even though they have allowed it in Adelaide). They claim that the 8 hour roster hasn't been causing delays yet nearly every plane leaves Perth late.
The scabs are few but when they work they break every rule under the sun to get aircraft turned around. That is what is unsafe here and many reports have gone in. They include -
-pushing aircraft without a headset connected
-aircraft taxying onto bay without marshalling due to lack of staff
-a tarmac being run without supervision
-scabs with mechanical licences signing autopilot defects out of category
-a scab changing an aircraft beacon and fitting one for the wrong aircraft because he is rushing and not working to the manual.
The list goes on and the target the staff have tried to meet has been exceeded by the union roster. This is a management group littered with ex Ansett fools trying to prove that if you fail once, try again until you succeed. The same principles saw the CASA grounding of the Ansett 767 fleet and the collapse of an Australian icon. Lets avoid it happening again.
Last edited by The masked goatrider; 12th Apr 2007 at 21:42.