Alliance last EBA for Engineers. Average salary was about 15% less than Qantas. Workers however were happy and their management team co-operative. We finalised a new EBA from nothing (no previous agreement) in 3 meetings. The company offered rises of 2% pa, our blokes said no problem we're happy with that. This is what you get from an engaged workforce.
This is something that a lot of lousy managers simply don't understand. They assume that staff only care about the bucks, and it's not true. Bucks are important, but staff who like their conditions and genuinely feel valued by their company will settle for fewer bucks. Staff who hate their company (usually because they feel that it hates them) will seek to get as much money out of it as possible because they're certainly not getting anything else out of the deal.
IMO a lot of these lousy managers only care about the bucks themselves (which is why they're lousy) and they can't comprehend that people go to work for other reasons like self worth, being a part of the team and similar. Companies like Alliance and Virgin get away with paying less because they provide their employees with fuzzy stuff like self worth and value. None of that can be quantified by bean counters and none of it can be faked. When a company is run purely by bean counters and fakes it's impossible for them to understand how it works; you may as well be speaking Swahili.
With Qantas, it appears that the powers that be are only there for the bucks (certainly not for the airline) so how could they possibly get it?
How many of the current Qantas Board or executive have ever spoken with passion about what they do, the company they work for or what it does? Compare them to Borghetti, Branson or the South West guy and you can see the difference. The impression I get is that it's not an airline to them; it's simply a meal ticket. It could be an aluminium smelter for all they care.
The dumb part of it is that doing so often doesn't even cost all that much. It's certainly a lot cheaper than having a big, public punch-up and grounding the fleet. The even dumber part is that even people who live in caves realise that airlines are not natural money-spinners any more than opera companies, and getting into the airline business is sitting at about #10,000 on the list of Great Ways To Make Money.