Thank you so much for your post Sunfish.
I was hoping that you would be able to shed some light on what we are going through.
I'm sometimes criticized for reading too much into the actions and behaviours of our current crop of "managers" but I STILL can't for the life of me imagine that a group of people could be so blindingly stupid.
Their actions over the last few years have done NOTHING other than to disengage the few remaining crew [and other staff] for that matter, that are left.
Let me explain.
NO ONE is disengaged with the company that is Qantas. Our unique heritage and history is something that ALL operational staff feel be it Engineers, Cleaners, Pilots, Bus Drivers, Cabin Crew etc......
It's the faceless goons, masquerading as mangement and employed of late [to do God knows ******* what?] that staff have issues with and it is this corrosive relationship that is at the heart of what is wrong with our company.
The vast majority of them have no airline experience, operational knowledge and from what I have garnered don't give a toss either.
They seem solely preoccupied with the maintenance of their own KPI's which can ONLY be based around their ability to FURTHER disengage as it is all they have EVER done.
Operational staff WANT QF to succeed but they DONT want to be bullied, demeaned, harassed or dehumanised.
Stop the rot you morons and you might just see the kind of results achieved recently at Air New Zealand.
A company that can only be described as having management using worlds best practice.
Note the heading of the article.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out who it is directed towards.........
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Look-listen-learn
Geoffrey Thomas | August 17, 2007
THE New Zealand born-again award-winning airline is rewriting the airline staff management relations book with executives rolling up sleeves and working side by side with staff getting a dose of the "right stuff".
Every month, chief executive Rob Fyfe - and the rest of the airline's executives - don flight attendant uniforms and serve coffee or a fine New Zealand sauvignon blanc or might spend a day on the check-in counters or loading baggage.
And while they are doing that, they are reinforcing Charles Darwin's great quote that "it's not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent but the ones most responsive to change", for they are completely changing the way management deals with airline staff.
Air New Zealand has travelled an extraordinary journey since the bleak days of 2001 and it has all been built on interaction with staff, initially under former chief executive and current Commonwealth Bank chief executive Ralph Norris and now under Fyfe.
The result? Air NZ is now the most admired brand in New Zealand. According to recent survey by Britain-based TNS Global Research, the percentage of customers who would recommend the airline has grown from a paltry 44 per cent across the international network in 2004 to 90 per cent for the first time ever in November last year. "Our people are our brand" is the way Fyfe describes it. Every month or so, Fyfe hosts a staff barbecue for charity on the veranda outside the open-plan executive offices.
When Norris took the reins in early 2002, Air NZ had just written off $NZ1.45 billion - the largest write-off in New Zealand corporate history - after the collapse of its Ansett subsidiary.
A TRULY REMARKABLE STORY