In todays Sydney Morning Herald...........
Qantas seeks overseas help with strike threat
Scott Rochfort
December 24, 2007
QANTAS has become so desperate to recruit strikebreakers to ward off industrial action by its aircraft engineers that it has asked Air New Zealand and even the 400 engineers it made redundant last year for help.
Faced with work stoppages by its 1700 engineers from January 9, which are set to cripple operations, Qantas has attempted to lure back former engineering staff who took redundancies when it closed its Sydney 747 heavy maintenance base in May last year.
"The money being offered is nearly double what they were paid previously," said one engineer, who asked not to be named.
Qantas's head of people, Kevin Brown, declined to comment on the speculation. But he said the airline was "pursuing a variety of arrangements … [to] ensure our passengers can book with confidence through January".
In a move set to further inflame tensions, the airline has gone across the Tasman for help.
"Air New Zealand came to us and told us they had had been approached by Qantas and if our members would be interested," Andrew Little, the national secretary of the New Zealand Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union, said.
Mr Little said it was unlikely the licensed aircraft maintenance engineers - LAMEs - at Air New Zealand would want to help out.
"Our members will not be playing any role," he said. "We're 100 per cent unionised over here."
But it is understood Qantas has had better luck signing up some of the licensed engineers Air New Zealand made redundant last year. The airline's attempts to raise a workforce of temporary engineers follows the breakdown of 13-month-old enterprise bargaining talks with the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association.
The union has demanded a 5 per cent annual pay rise for its members, compared to Qantas's 3 per cent offer.
"We think our 5 per cent is not only reasonable but something that all people in the company should be taking," said the ALAEA's federal president, Paul Cousins, in a dig at the large salary increases Qantas executives have enjoyed in recent years.
Qantas's executive general manager of engineering, David Cox, for example, saw his pay packet increase 50 per cent to $1.89 million last financial year.
The association was given the green light to start four-hour stoppages against Qantas last Friday, when 87 per cent of its members voted in favour of industrial action. This could represent the biggest disruption to air travel in Australia since the 1989 pilots dispute which grounded the domestic market for months. Qantas jets can only take off once they have been cleared by a licensed engineer.
The problem for Qantas is that even without strike action, it has become difficult to find trained engineers. Those who are brought in from overseas also need to go through an exhaustive accreditation process with the Civil Air Safety Authority.
The last chance for Qantas to avoid strike action will come on January 4, when it resumes talks with the ALAEA. But the union has insisted it will not compromise its claim for a pay rise, making the chances of an agreement more remote. "It's never been an ambit claim," Mr Cousins said.
Good luck with your eba guys.........Go for it
Memo to Kevin Brown.... you are head of people.......try acting like one for a change
