Raverflaver, I immigrated to Canada, and then applied for an airline job here. In refererence to the comment about South Africa, I would do the same (immigrate to South Africa, become a permanent resident and then apply as I did in Canada). South African Airways is not coming to the UK and recruiting for jobs that current South African residents can do, and the same should apply for Qantas. You do not ask for special dispensation by the UK government to open a base in the UK, then cirmumvent it by finding people on ancestry visas in other Commonwealth countries to fill the position native Britons can do. The UK is suffering from high unemployment. Australia is not. I think the recruitment should be local. It would be one thing if Qantas was hiring in the UK and these people were coming to the UK for the interview, as they did in the past. In this instance, they are not even interviewing locals but going to OZ and hiring from there. It is a clever way of getting around hiring local British people basically and still maintaining a base that technically employs at least half of the permanent postions by British citizens which is the requirement. United Airlines and Air New Zealand follow the rules (atleast half crew are permenant residents with the other overseas crews on temporary visas), why should Qantas get away with it?
I think Australians would feel the same if Virgin, for example, was going out of its way to find people with the right of abode in Australia to fill SYD based jobs, going overseas and recruiting them, rather than employing local Australians, tricking Immigration Australia into thinking they are creating jobs in Australia, but yet in fact are going out of the country to find people with work permission and bringing them in. This is essentially what Qantas is doing, and in a time where people in Britian are sensative to their jobs being lost, if this were truly brought to light to the public, I doubt the public would be supportive of it.
If Qantas wants to fill these postions with Australians, then they need to crew these flights from Australia, and not in London. They basically want crew that are Australian culturally, and at the same time reap the rewards of $100 million a year in hotel savings by having a base in London. Well, you can't eat your cake and have it too. If you want a British base, then you employ British or European permanent residents, period. If they happen to be from Australia originally, wonderful. At the very least, the recruitment should be done in London and interviews should take place in London.
Last edited by yaletown; 7th Aug 2010 at 06:36.