Sue Bussell (Qantas IR) at the UNI of Sydney last year.
http://sydney.edu.au/business/__data...ell_190410.pdf
At about page 7 she discuss how Qantas played a roll in keeping the Modern pilot award to an absolute minimum so as to keep Australia competitive with internationals flying in OZ.
The recent review of Modern awards was an opportunity for the distinction between a safety net and conditions bargained in individual enterprises to be tested.
The Qantas group played a significant role in the review of the aviation industry awards. Although it might appear that an easy approach for Qantas would have been to stand back from the process because raising the industry standard would impact on our ‘low cost’ competitors more than on Qantas mainline, our view was that the long term competitiveness of the industry in Australia required that aviation industry awards remained as true Industry minima. Otherwise, we would have become potentially less competitive with international
carriers operating to Australia, and we also needed to protect our subsidiaries Jetstar and QantasLink – QantasLink provides services to regional Australia and has some community service obligations. The challenge was significant with some unions taking a very different
approach to the concept of a safety net being a minimum standard. We had to provide comprehensive data and the initial decisions of the Tribunal were then subject to a Ministerial request for review. However in the end, under very difficult circumstances the Tribunal got it right for this industry. There was no evidence of any individual being worse off and the awards provide for a fair minimum standard safety net that is a foundation – not a replacement - for collective bargaining.
In the longer term, the issue with modern awards will be the extent to which unions pursue arbitrated award variations to raise employment conditions outside of the bargaining stream. To the extent this does occur – if it occurs - the more the safety net will circumscribe the real scope for enterprise bargaining and hence the scope to tailor employment conditions to the needs of particular enterprises. If the Hawke/Keating
Labour Government and every Government since then was right – that the move from standard industry wide arbitrated outcomes to bargained enterprise level outcomes provided a key lever for economic reform and growth – then we need to be very careful that the safety net remains just that - an underpinning minima, not a vehicle for establishing new standards and benchmarks.
