These guys running Qantas aren't even original!
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
From an article back in the late '90's in Business World by Teddy Casino.
"Is it possible to lose money and yet make a profit, lots of it?
Yes especially if you're Lucio Tan.
Not only that, you can even run your company into the ground, make millions and then position yourself for more.
The scheme is very simple.
First ,buy an ailing Government asset like Phillipine Airlines for a song.
Then embark on a US$4 billion refleeting program involving the purchase of 36 new jets.
But don't use your own money.
Or if you do, just put in enough to make people think you've put out a lot.
The trick is to borrow US$850 million from European creditors,
US$230 million from local banks including one you own, and billions more from other local and international sources.
After pocketing the commissions from the planes, you can even form some dummy corporations to lease the planes to your newly acquired airline at 40% more than normal rates"
Next spin off the company’s money-making operations like training and in-flight catering, to your other companies.
Buy spare parts and equipment ,not from the manufacturers themselves which sell them cheap, but through your own distributorship which allows bigger commissions.
In other words, milk all you can from the company. That’s right, suck it to the marrow.
If you do everthing correctly, your company will have lost P451 million in the first year and P8.08 billion in the fifth, the biggest loss in the airline’s 57 year history.
With your company now severly in the red, you will have a convenient excuse to lay off thousands and, in the process, bust the unions.Tell your workers you have no choice. Blame the Asian currency crisis, the liberalisation of the Aviation industry, the down-grading of the Phillipines to a category 2 destination by the US Federal Aviation Administration, the high cost of plane maintenance and the grossly unprofitable missionary domestic routes.
But never, never blame yourself or your mismanagement of the company.
When your airline finally crashes, file for insolvency at the Securities and Exchange Commission and save your-self the trouble of paying P85 billion worth of debts, including billions worth of separation pay and retirement benefits due thousands of workers you have laid off with impunity.
In the end you will be left with a bankrupt company but with millions more in your pocket.
By this time you will have succeeded in turning your workforce into a horde of servile commercial labourers without a union to protect them.
Now you can reorganise the company the way you want it with the minimum of opposition. Now you can really make money.
That is how the picture looks to the workers of PAL, many of whom are still smarting from their recent standoff with the management of Lucio Tan.
For clearly their woes are far from over.
Things are worse for the pilots, the original strikers whose 550 or so members remain jobless.
Ironically , the PAL management refuses to give them their termination papers, proof that the company still needs them and in fact, wants them to re-apply, of course as second-class probationary or contractual workers. As far as ALPA is concerned, Mr Tan’s plans are to break the union, prevent the pilots from getting in other airlines and starve them into submission.
It should be made clear that the issue here is not merely job security.
Even the unions admit that these lay-offs are actually part of managements plan to restructure the corporation and were here long before the strike and long before the massive losses.
In fact it seems that the severe losses were actually stage-managed to justify lay-offs and will be further used to justify whatever sweeping changes may be made at PAL.
What we see here is a kind of corporation restructure that preys on its own workers. What we see here is plain simple greed taking precedence over the livelihoods and rights of thousands of workers. And what we see here is Government that condones such actions.
In the meantime ,Mr Tan gets away scot-free. Capitalism does work doesn’t it?´´
Last edited by blow.n.gasket; 8th Oct 2013 at 10:41.