More interesting quotes from
6 Nov 2011
Originally Posted by Alan Joyce
Secondly, I could have decided that we continue the way we were going. We had already been in dispute for months. We had already been in a dispute that cost us, as I said at that AGM, $68 million. We had already had 70,000 passengers disrupted. We had already seen hundreds of flights cancelled. We had already seen our forward bookings absolutely collapsing. In every indicator that we had, people were not travelling with us; people had decided that Qantas was not going to be reliable. We had union leaders talking about a slow bake over a year. We had union leaders say, 'Do not book with Qantas over Christmas.' We had union leaders saying this could last into the middle or end of next year. So we knew we were losing our customers rapidly, and the $15 million a week that that was costing us meant we were at the verge of a huge crisis in Qantas. We were at a crisis in Qantas and we needed to do something.
The only alternative that was left to me was to bring this to a head, to say, 'We cannot last another year.' Therefore the decision was made that we would take, as a consequence of the union action, a lockout of the employees—and it was only the employees that were taking the action and covered by those agreements. We had made it very clear to the rest of the employees that we were going to continue to pay their salaries. We felt that was the only viable way that we could get an agreement that was not going to endanger the future survival of the company.
He wanted to bring it to a head then, now he wants to drag it out. How have forward bookings been since the fear campaign started in early December 2013?
Every step along the way has been about destroying the mainline airline, not preserving it. Each time a plausible narrative has been used as justification for actions taken by management. However, later in near identical circumstances, those actions ARE NOT taken, and the previous plausible narratives are simply forgotten.
All most everyone has been played, the shareholders, customers, employees, media and the government.