PAF:
It really does beg the question. When QF profits decline (as they will eventually) are you willing to take a 6-8% pay cut, nothing less?
You seem to have the wrong handle on the concept of ownership here.
It's the shareholders who are entitled to ALL of the surplus that Qantas makes. That is what they receive in exchange for assuming the risk of investing in Qantas.
If the company does not make money, it's the shareholders who have to cop it, not the employees, barring of course an in extremis situation where some staff MIGHT agree to a pay cut to save their jobs.
However this is a rare event for no one is going to supply anything (including their labor) for less than the cost of its production - and that applies to every business, as I have occasionally found to my sorrow (and so by the way have a number of car manufacturers - to their sorrow as well).
PAF:
I haven't seen Dixon making pay demands or threatening to strike as CEO if he doesn't get what he wants!
You are once again demonstrating your complete and total naivety
For a start, Dixon's pay is established by remuneration consultants on an international comparative basis, and even one years pay (about 6 million) is more than its more than enough to provide financial security for himself and his family for the remainder of his life. Then there are the stock options, Golden handcuffs and a golden parachute.
This is all tied up in a contract that will have been negotiated by Dixon's lawyer and Qantas lawyers and backed by a Board level remuneration consultants report. So of course Dixon doesn't grumble about his pay! He negotiated it himself!
The reason for this is simple. Being a CEO is a Pr1ck of a job. If you foul up, you will never work again and become a figure of ignominy for the rest of your sorry life. It's a bit like being an actor, and at some stage the audience says "Enough" and you are out. You maybe even have to commit management suicide, if it is in the interest of shareholders, by recommending a takeover bid and the consequent elimination or your own job.
In other words, being a CEO is a "One Off" job.To do it, you need a guarantee of absolute financial satisfaction whatever the outcome, otherwise it simply isn't worth doing.
And finally, if I was making a billion dolars for the shareholders, I'd want a chunk of it to stick to my fingers as well!
Employees on the other hand, have nothing to bargain with except their labor. They have families to feed and zero financial security beyond the next paycheck as they work their way hopefully towards eventual retirement and perhaps enough superannuation to live on.
Then in striking a bargain over their supply of labor, the Howard individual AWA's provide a massive assymetry in bargaining power between the individual (who must bargain maybe once every three years) versus the company - who employs specialist industrial relations consultants who know all the tricks and bargain every day.
Is it any wonder then that employees want to band together and bargain as a group?
Since the deliberate destruction of the (old and arthritic) conciliation and arbitration system there is nothing that can be done without the application of pressure by both sides if negotiations fail.
And finally, management is dreaming if they think there is an ocean of qualified people willing to work for peanuts. To me, thats an often fatal assumption.
But then of course Frozo, you don't get to bargain about your wages do you?