Qantas is in its death spiral. That is the general idea. Destroy the workforce and corporate intelligence, then take it private and start again.
That cruise I took around NZ really opened my eyes to what the future holds for the average worker if the powers that be get their way. The organisation of that cruiseship was so slick it was frightening.
1. Employment on short term contracts with no guarantee of renewal. That enures that Labor can never again organise itself because "troublemakers" don't get their contracts renewed. The cruise ship staff are all on Six month contracts. They change some staff at the end of each voyage - about Ten percent by my reckoning, its a continuous roll over process so that crews cannot form any relationships with each other past Six months.
2. Deliberate employment of foreign workers from a wide variety of countries. This is a divide and conquer strategy that further prevents unionisation.
The benefit of this strategy, apart from preventing unionisation are:
(i) Managers have absolute power over workers. One bark and your contract won't be renewed.
(ii) The company can keep the age of its workforce constant by removing older workers. Forget about stuff like maternity leave as well. This approach also solves the "old boiler" problem.
(iii) Wages can be kept constant at the minimum rate for English speakers. The "front of house" cruise ship staff came from Romania, Ukraine, Mexico, Thailand and a variety of other low cost countries. Engineers don't need English because the passengers don't see them. They may need a translator though.
(iiii) There an be no question of informal leaders arising based on experience and capability. You cannot challenge the Manager.
The assumptions management must make to implement this strategy are as follows:
(a) Organisational memory, skill and expertise is not required because every action can be reduced to a written procedure and the work performed by a machine if at all possible. The expertise and skill must only reside in management. All else are worker bees.
(b) There is an inexhaustible supply of people who will work for peanuts.
(c) Governments will take no action to impede the process, nor will the public put pressure on Government to act.
It appears that this is the Qantas philosophy.
Joyce has already said that modern aircraft fix themselves and don't need a skilled workforce to maintain them. Check box (a).
Joyce is already hiring foreign crews. Check box (b).
Joyce alternatively threatens and cajoles Government. Check box (c).
Unless tthe average Australian reacts, their future is rather bleak.