Qantas is about to learn a very hard lesson. Hopefully it will only be shareholders and managers who feel the pain.
At some point it becomes obvious to employees that their employer can't be trusted. When that happens employees put their own interests first and minimise their contribution to the business. This is what I saw on my last international flight with Qantas a long time ago - tired, dispirited staff just going through the motions of pretending to look after passengers.
To put that another way, one managemnt theory is that management exists to insulate staff from uncertainty and risk by providing them with a stable (risk free) environment in which they can work for the good of the company. Qantas obviously does not subscrbe to this belief as it has been doing its level best for as long as I have been on Pprune to create and foster fear uncertainty and doubt among at least its engineering workforce.
Qantas calculates that the mystique of airlines and international travel will provide it a steady stream of naive ingenues who can be recruited into its workforce and discarded when it suits it and I think they are right, I have One or Two acquaintances who are blissfully happy there at the moment.
However there needs to be a core workforce of old and not bold experienced workers who know the tricks and traps of the trade, and it is the loss of these people that worries me....
Specifically I am worried about line maintenance and operations and to a lesser extent engineering planning, repair and overhaul and heavy maintenance. One simple mistake made by a stressed employee in these areas can lead to tragedy.
To put that another way, consider what might have happened if the failure to perform the AD on the Ansett B767 tail had not been picked up.