So Company please tell me why you cannot get your new employees from the pool of labour right here in Australia?
We recruit from the local market too. I did not say that our total employee growth was being supported by overseas people.
However, there are a number of barriers we face with the local market.
The most significant is skill shortage, complimented by the opportunity to engage people with a very broad range of skill and experience from other operators, regulators, states and countries. There is a skill shortage in Australia, and when growing a business one must have access to skills to be quick to market, fast to respond.
Another significant barrier we face is competition for quality people here in Australia. Competition from other operators, regulators, vendors and clients as the aviation market grows and grows. People are going offshore, always have, always will, and we have a strategy to meet this leakage with imports. Simple Keynsian response to the curves.
We don't lose people because of money. We pay the same rates as our LCC cousins, and in most cases more. Some of our captains earn as much as 40% over award. Some of our FO's earn the same over award return. Thank John for AWA's, we are a company that proves the lefty mantra is as hollow as KR's genuine nature.
We lose pilots because of red, orange, white, teal and other vivid coloured jets.
We don't lose engineers.
We like management people from backgrounds that have been there seen that.
We are keen to train Aussies with more skills, and will continue to do so. You paint a picture that we are just plain stupid. Of course we train locals and give them skills. We are just trying justify pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the development of the skill set for Brett Godfrey, Geoff Dixon, Michael O'Leary and Alan Joyce. Because it is FACT that the last five captains we have lost have all left us to take less money and more overnights within 12 months of being trained. Why did they leave? According to the independent exit interviews, because of the red, orange, white etc jet.
The fact there was already fans bolted to the airframe does not count.
As for the silly comment that "oh we'll see, couple of years and they will run away" is said like someone well practiced at staying in something for 12-18 months. You should not need to do much research to find that for every 100 foreign workers coming to Australia, 99 stay. And the other was Haneef!
