Hi there Trollywally....I did not listen to crew voice on this occasion either...however I asked my best friend to listen in for me...and he told me that Alison made the comment re: CR....."we have had discussions with the union". This of course does not necessarily mean that it will happen, but nonetheless, the company has raised the issue to be talked about now.
I don't think the unions or anyone has the power to stop Qantas from embarking on CR. Qantas is a capitalist enterprise just like any other and it has the right to shed its workforce if it can prove that times are tough and that it has tried to offer VR and other measures like LWOP and Part time. Whether Qantas can get away with offerring CR before the end of the year and then recruiting into New Entity in January 2009 is debatable. I'm putting big bets they can get away with it. They are very smart......oopps rephrase that....they employ smart labour market specialist lawyers.
Don't take my post the wrong way...I'm not gloating happily about it all or being smug. I'm just playing devil's advocate here and trying to put forth other arguments for healthy discussion.