Tuner says you are helpless.
Keg says wait till later.
With respect, neither of you understand the subject.
Waiting is no use. Public perceptions of the pilots are being built brick by brick, day by day. The airline keeps piling it on week by week and it builds up and sticks in peoples minds......."flyboys", "$500,000 paypacket"......mmmmh get me a beer and change to channel Seven, "pocket $200,000", "free flights anywhere in the world"......mmmh change to Channel Ten..
These are what are called "sounds bites" and they are the only thing that stick in most peoples minds for more than five seconds and they build up and clog peoples brains as they are supposed to.
The only counter to this is to produce your own sound bites, and it must be done professionally and it has to be done right now. On another thread the Panther did a reasonable job :
"Qantasia" is an excellent sound bite. It summarises what Joyce wants to do to the airline. You need many, many more sound bites right now, starting with a lot about greedy managers, dodgy Chinese quality - it can be as xenophobic as you like because sound bites appeal to peoples vices, not virtues.
But it needs to be done
now and got out through social media, bar talk, emails, jokes, etc. etc. Paul Keating was a master at this, remember his plan for tax increases and his crack about the dangers of getting between a Yuppy and a pile of money?
I've heard this same "all in good time" argument about starting
PR campaigns and every time people did this, they f%^d it up. Do it now. Prior planning prevents piss poor etc.,etc.
Now to Tuners point
you are not helpless at all!!!!! Firstly journos are lazy. The idea of good
PR is to write the story for them, that's what press releases are about, however if you don't get them out there, and plenty of them, why the f&*k would a bored and busy journalist take the time to really find out what you are going on about? He gets a press release from Qantas with a juicy quote from AJ, he gets SFA from your union or a stiffly worded denial of what AJ said. What the f%^k is the journo going to do? He cuts and pastes the Qantas press release and in the last sentence, which most d1ckheads won't even get to he writes "AIPA officials denied this claim" or "AIPA officials were unavailable for comment."
You need a
PR genius who can write nice, juicy, sweet, tender stories that are just as malicious and venomous as the Qantas stuff. You don't want the Captain of QF32 spouting about pay rates, you want the head of the union saying "send that f&**ing Irish Leprechaun back where he came from, we don't need his type in Australia to tell us how to run an airline. Qantas is staffed and run by Australians and we mean to keep it that way";
that will make the papers.
And of course all publicity is good publicity, the papers can then run an apology to an outraged AJ and the Irish community and a photo of the head of AIPA drinking Guiness with someone Irish. Result: The public now knows who the head of the AIPA is and what he stands for, and a lot will agree with him....and of course every time after that when they see AJ on television they will think.....
"fukcing irish leprechaun" and stop believing him.
If you do not understand how all this works I can't help you. If you don't understand that media is a blood sport I can't help you. The fight you are in does not operate by Marquis of Queensberry rules. Get professional help, fast.