Some of the things you have said life sentence ar true but other most certainly are not. Thnx for voting no and I'll now respond to some of your comments.
The AME unions cop a lot of crap from LAMEs and the ALAEA for not having any
industrial backbone. Cast your mind back to the mid 2000's when QF had their
"wage freeze". There was only one aggreement in that period that had a pay rise
in it and it wasn't the ALAEA's.
This is correct and even worse, the ALAEA were the first union to sign on to the wage freeze. AME unions then also had different leaders who didn't hold back on supporting their members. The ALAEA was the companies favourtie union and members often felt ripped off. That's why a new team of leaders were elected in 2006.
The 2008 dispute did gain some positive EBA outcomes but it also indirectly
resulted in a lot of people losing customer payments when managment got some
payback.
2008 plus 2011 LAME disputes led directly to the same wages outcomes and benefits in AME Agreements. If we got less, AMEs would have got less. Customer contracts and paybacks weren't ditched because of any dispute. It started in 2007 when the Sin contract was dumped. It was a company wide policy from before 2008 to get rid of all contracts and it was not just Engineering because it was also Ramp and Customer Services.
If the words "no A licences for the life of this agreement" had been in your
determination I would not be here typing this dribble.
True. They weren't in the previous Agreement either. The aruments in the last few days of the "30 day negotiation period" were over the company trying to remove our "retain existing job functions". We kept that clause and it is still uncertain whether the airline will be able to take one of our functions - certification. Qantas have a few hurdles to jump over yet.
There has been stuff all training for AMEs anyway.
Cat A may reduce the opportunity for AMEs to be type trained but the
percentage of AMEs being trained over the last few years is so close to zero
that it we may not even notice the difference.
Why do you think there has been stuff all training in the last few years? I know why. It's because they knew that although the ALAEA would not allow Cat A licences unless there was a genuine career path (like we negotiated at Virgin), they had two soft unions that were already talking about your future. It was sold down the drain a long time ago.
The lack of recent training has been in anticipation of the day they signed off on the new Agreement with the AMWU and AWU. This was all pre-planned hence the pi$$ week support we had from the ACTU and Labor party when they intervened in the 2011 dispute. You may have noticed the then disability Minister Bill Shorten sitting front row at FWA. I spoke to him much over those days and he was there to make sure the governments intervention was approved and hence deliverence of cheaper LAMEs to Qantas, more members to the AME unions and more money for the Labor Party. That is why there has been little recent type training for AMEs.