QF piot retrenchments

[WoodenEye]

Went to yesterday's AIPA meeting on Managing the Pilot Surplus and judging from what was said by the 100 or so persons present, believe the majority of Mainline pilots will not take kindly to making financial comprises whilst Jetstar and Jetconnect continue to recruit new hires and Mainline continues to shrink.

Personally believe that Qantas desperately needs a unified group of pilots before it can start considering what it wants to do to take advantage of opportunity Open Skies globalisation is likely to throw up, and provided concessions aren’t given without also securing career progress; redundancy may well be avoided?

Yes, saving jobs probably needs to be accompanied by some form of financial comprise that not only accommodates the current financial crisis, but also helps with reform that will keep Qantas competitive and its pilots well remunerated. For what it is worth, I suggested to AIPA’s CoM:

• Whilst members obviously prefer cash, corporations wanting to ‘cut cash burn’ will often encourage employees to take Equity in lieu and prima facie there are compelling commercial, financial and operational reasons to offset future pay rises against equity in the Company.

At the end of the day however, it is the Membership that has to vote in favour of any such change.