Originally Posted by T28D
The process started in 1986 at Robe River where productivity had been falling, and the owners found they were paying an increasing proportion of its workforce to be nothing more than full time union agitators
You are right, it is about labour productivity. The fundamental difference is this "productivity issue" is entirely due to managements own actions.
The transfer of flying to subsidiaries without permitting the transfer of the labour, despite a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) between the parties that pilots could transfer
on the conditions of the subsidiary. Despite the MOU, the vast majority pilots were denied the right to transfer, and instead were assigned large amounts of accrued annual leave (which in many cases they were not permitted to take in the period 1998~2004, particularly on the 767) and Long Service Leave.
The certified agreement on the longhaul aircraft permits
the full 900 stick hours to utilized, and in many cases crew were doing their annual max on the 744. Domestically it is a bit more difficult, simply because the award was never designed to be used for short sector flying. AIPA negotiated a separate agreement to operate Australian Airlines, which I am lead to believe management had no issue with efficiency. By all accounts everyone was satisfied with this arrangement. The pilots have been willing to negotiate as necessary - They negotiated reduced flying for crew to help the company. This favour was repaid by
handing the savings directly to Geoff Dixon to boost his payout because of a tax law change.
The issue is one of using the longhaul pilots as the bunnies to help with the management agenda of destroying the international operation. Management stuffed up monumentally with it fleet choices & networks. Rather than growing their slice while the whole pie got bigger, they did nothing and so Qantas's slice shrunk relative to other operators. Now they claim its the fault of the pilots which make up 4% of the costs. Do you really believe that?
Now they want to move to Asia, just adding another few degree's of difficulty. This whole dispute is to mask & deflect from managements poor performance.