As a simple member of the public, but as one with corporate experience and knowledge, let me make these following points clear to any QF employees who still hope and believe that this move by AJ will fail and backfire.
1. This move by the Qantas board would have been planned months ago, and with unbelievable attention to detail.
2. AL, LC and other board members didn't get to where they are, by being "nice people". The top levels of the corporate world are filled with utterly ruthless, utterly immoral, and utterly greed-and-ambition-driven people. They take no prisoners.
3. This move is their "blitzkreig", while you all sit around and wave pieces of paper, like Neville Chamberlain. Grounding Qantas is his commencement salvo equivalent to dropping a 14" shell amongst you, before you've even thought about digging trenches. These people treat workers as cannon fodder to achieve their aims. Those aims are to reduce costs to half what they are now, and to exact huge financial rewards to themselves as part of the deal.
4. Unfortunately, AJ, LC and the board will win. There is no way that Qantas will ever remain in its present form, because these people have no intention of allowing it to happen. In the future, the 29th of October 2011 will be seen as the day that the original Qantas died.
5. The aim of AJ and the board is to drop a hand grenade that scatters the mob. In addition, this move is designed to make politicians cave in, and allow the Qantas Sale Act to be dismantled. (Every other Act, Govt-owned organisation or other legislation designed to benefit the Australian people has been dismantled or destroyed by corporate bastardry that made politicians cave in to their demands).
6. The travelling public care not a whit, in general, about who carries them, in this day and age. They have been trained to seek out the lowest cost, and at the click of a mouse button, they can find it.
To the travelling public, all aeroplanes look the same, all pilots look the same, and the main factor that drives them is how easy it is for them to get a free upgrade.
The anger of the public is currently directed at Qantas. Not AJ, not LC, not any board member. Just Qantas, the airline. The damage has been done to the brand, and neither AJ, nor LC, nor any board member really care.
They are intent on their Asianisation plan, and it will be carried out, without a shadow of a doubt.
Unions and complaining workers are just a problem that have to be deal with in a jackboot manner .. and believe me, these people regard jackboots as just part of their tools of trade.
I have been in on enough corporate meetings (as a corporate outsider) to see how these people operate. They talk about how they plan to ambush people, ramp shares, and do anything that is needed, to fulfill their aims of power and greed.
They are utterly devoid of ethics or morals, and I don't believe that anyone who has never been party to their corporate scheming, understands how ruthless these people are, and how little they care about peoples lives, loyalties, and working conditions.
I feel sorry for all genuinely honest and hardworking Qantas employees, because you are no match for these ruthless pricks.