BARBARA MILLER: Five Thai based crew though said that they'd felt too tired to operate a Sydney to Melbourne flight and were castigated for that and asked by their Thai based employer to give guarantees that they would not repeat that behaviour.
That surely is unacceptable.
BRUCE BUCHANAN: That is unacceptable. And that's why we've gone back to the supplier when we were aware of the allegations yesterday and said this is unacceptable.
We've told TET who recruit cabin crew on our behalf, and there's a number of these sorts of suppliers in countries like Thailand and Singapore and Asian markets where they recruit crew for a number of airlines.
And we've said, look that may be acceptable to other airlines where you chastise and intimidate them. But that's just not just part of the standards of the Qantas Group and we find it unacceptable that you've issued these letters.
What is unacceptable to BB is that the crew publicly complained.
So here we are folks; Qantas is paying its senior management top dollars to implement a foreign labour hire strategy that any Two bit property developer could have done for almost nothing..... So much for grand strategy, this is pure, simple, stupid, pointless idiocy on behalf of Qantas.
This folks is the "supplier/fulfillment" business model in all it sordid, **** covered, smelly glory.
The theory goes that the value of Qantas is in the brand and nothing else. The theory goes that all the components that go to make up the airline are merely "business inputs" that can be provided by "suppliers" who will provide the required product or service for a simple fee.
In this theory, you are not a "pilot" but a "provider of piloting services". Qantas simply pays someone to provide "piloting services" and that is the end of it. The folks who do all this are called "supply chain managers".
The idea behind all this is that
risk is systematically removed, or so Qantas management thinks. They don't have to worry about care and feeding of employees, retirement, training, rosters, etc. etc. One simple monthly fee to the supplier takes care of all that.
The ultimate abstraction of this business model has the senior management and Board sipping champagne as the only employees of the business, with literally everything else being contracted out - pilots, engineering, cabin crew, wet leased aircraft - the lot. All the owners have to do is collect the money and pay the suppliers.
The trouble with this wonderful concept is a little matter called
"value added" Every one of your suppliers in this beautiful construct takes away a tiny little morsel of your value added. Furthermore, and what is worse, it denies you any chance of adding extra value - because that requires staff to
do something more than they contracted for. This is where this model trips and falls flat on its face like Qantas is in the process of doing.
So lets take our Thai Jetstar cabin crew....
When there is an over run, accident and fire at Darwin or Den Pasar, I will say right now that I expect that those Thai Cabin crew will be first off the aircraft and to hell with you and your family. Did they contract to die fighting bravely for the lives of their Qantas passengers? No way! They are simply contractors.
Mother gets asthma and requires a drink of water in flight? No way, I'm just a contractor.
Same with engineers and pilots - sorry fella, I just do as I'm told, fixing your problems is not covered by my pay grade.
I've told my son I'll disinherit him if he flies Jetstar anywhere, and I mean it.
The model was made to work by guys like Lindsay Fox, Toll and Patrick, but even some of their customers are taking their logistics back inside because they were losing control.