Two couriers have told ABC's Lateline program that Qantas booked drivers to deliver lockout notices in the days leading up to the airline's announcement it was grounding its fleet.
When Qantas first took industrial action just over three weeks ago, CEO Alan Joyce said he had made the decision to ground the airline on the Saturday morning after the Qantas AGM.
Passengers were left stranded, holidays were ruined and Qantas customers and employees were united in their anger.
Lateline has spoken to couriers and Qantas workers who have raised doubts about the timeline laid out by Mr Joyce at the Senate hearing.
Two employees of Direct Couriers have told Lateline they were asked to work on Sunday, October 30, as part of a mass delivery of this lockout notice to at least 6,000 Qantas staff.
The couriers, who spoke to Lateline on the condition their names were not used, said that drivers were booked for the job in the days before Mr Joyce says he made the decision to ground the airline.
"I was asked on Friday. We were told they had a one-off job on Sunday and we would start at 6:00am. We weren't told we might have a job, we were told we had a job," one courier said.
"On the Thursday I was asked if I wanted to work Sunday - an all-dayer. We were told we could work any area we liked and it was delivering letters," said the other.
Both couriers have confirmed the job was delivering lockout notices for Qantas.
Direct Couriers refused to comment, and Mr Joyce today denied the allegations that couriers were booked before October 29.
"We have been very clear on this and there's been lots on conspiracy theories," he said.
"The printers were booked on the day that we made the decision and no notices had been ordered in terms of printing and nobody had been informed of it because the decision wasn't made until the Saturday."
Labor Senator and former Transport Workers Union official Alex Gallacher, who is on the Senate Committee which has been questioning Mr Joyce, says the logistics of the exercise would have required pre-planning.
"Obviously to individually deliver to workers' homes on the weekend a notice of lockout, there needs to be some considerable pre-planning in respect to that," he said.
"I don't think there are enough couriers active on a Sunday, which is traditionally a slow day in transport ... available at the drop of the hat to suddenly activate such a comprehensive delivery schedule.
"[Mr Joyce] has a lot of questions to answer as there are about 24 unanswered questions on notice out of the hearing and a large number of unanswered questions arising from consideration of the transcript of the hearing."
Video: The dispute between Qantas and unions will go to forced arbitration after negotiations failed. (Lateline)
Managers flown out
Lateline has also obtained an internal memo sent to flight attendants at the time of the grounding of the fleet by the executive manager of the Qantas cabin crew.
It confirms that Qantas sent four senior cabin crew managers to Singapore and Los Angeles in the lead-up to the announcement of the lockout.
All four flew out on the Friday on the day of the Qantas AGM. According to the memo, their role was to provide information to cabin crew about the grounding of the fleet.
When asked why the managers were flown to Los Angeles and Singapore on the Friday, Mr Joyce responded "You could also say 'why did we send our entire
PR department to Melbourne on the day of the announcement and had to fly them back on Virgin?"
"There was no decision made till the Saturday. We had contingency plans that were being prepared before the Saturday. But no decision had been made till the Saturday."
Qantas issued a statement to Lateline saying managers were flown out due to an anticipated increase in industrial action around the time of the AGM.
"The unions had indicated that they were planning on ramping up industrial action around our Annual General Meeting and as such four members of cabin crew management were sent to Singapore and Los Angeles," a spokesman for Qantas said.
But the unions dispute that they were planning to ramp up industrial action. The engineers union had called a three week halt to industrial action just the week before.
The Senate inquiry into the Qantas Sale Amendment Bill reopens on Thursday.
Topics: air-transport, industry, business-economics-and-finance, industrial-relations, unions, australia
First posted November 21, 2011 22:52:56