AUGUST 24th - QANTAS

[Worrals in the wilds]

Arnold, fair enough. I'm a relative young 'un and just rely on the building site/waterfront/airside stories from the 1970s that get aired at the pub. Trust me on this; I'm not anti Union.

My point is that strikes are a lot more regulated than they were forty years ago. I believe that the Qantas Board and PR machine are playing the Union Heavy card as if it's still the 1970s in the hope that the public will buy it. Poor Widdle Qantas at the mercy of the Big Bad TWU just isn't the reality any more, unless the action is endorsed by FWA as a result of a breakdown in EBA negotiations. Qantas keep forgetting to mention that.

Unfortunately for them, Qantas IS a unionized work force, otherwise they would be dealing with 35000 separate employees...

They'd luurve that. 35,000 bickering individuals? You'd be lucky if anyone got paid at all. That's what companies do with their contract managers; set them all off against each other, ban them from discussing their salaries, set unachievable goals and eat away at their conditions one by one. Managers are worse off than wage earners when it comes to job security, conditions and sometimes pay, because they negotiate individually. It's amusing that so few of the poor little suckers realise it while they're looking down their noses at the plebs.