QE Management - I Just Don't Get It!!!
For 21 months the ALAEA has been trying to negotiate in good faith. Qantas has just stonewalled us. 12 months ago, in a meeting with Cox, it was raised that lack of renumeration and training was resulting in staff leaving in record numbers for Qantas Engineering. "Are you aware of the long term ramifications?" was a question he choose not to answer. Nothing since has been done to rectify the situation, except for increasing the O/T.
Now, as part of our legal bargaining rights, O/T levels have reduced significantly. What does our esteemed management do? Starts getting A-Checks done in LAX. The problem is that Qantas is only getting the bare minimum done to stay legal. The aircraft aren't being maintained properly. The aircraft that returned back to Syd had over 50 defects (hold items) still outstanding.
This is part of the reason why QF2 has had 15 hour plus delays out of London the past 2 days (today's being an air turn-back), QF1 had an 16 hour delay on Monday, QF107 had a "return to gate" yesterday with an associated 4 hour delay. Does Qantas Engineering Management get it? The state of health of the Qantas fleet is declining rapidly. What's their response? Let's take more engineers away from maintaining the aircraft and turn them into managers. Let's see, approx. 14 engineers - average 25 years experience each - gone.
Why are they destroying Qantas's Safety / Reliability record? Why do they not care?