Could you please explain the mechanism and how exactly it would work, other than paid shills called Flight Operations managers making inadmissible statements to those they know will spread the word?
QANTAS don't have a scope clause, plenty of previous Red Tail Routes have been sent off to other parts of the group there is no legal way of stopping it. What would stop National Jet getting A320's painting them red and starting to do 737 flying? They've already done it with 717. Jetstar codeshares with mainline already.
I guess the scenario would that the pilots ask for a increase in terms and conditions, company refuses on ideological grounds, starts a prolonged protracted procrastination campaign, feeding tidbits to the media along the way, then starts outsourcing its flying to subcontractors and starts to whittle away the mainline pilot's flying.
As I said before, if Direct Entry commands were on offer you would be absolutely inundated from Australian Citizens who are working overseas. That's before you even look at other options.
This is the extreme end of the scale but it can be done. BHP caved into their industrial demands then replaced them with cheaper labour.
The world’s largest mining company, BHP Billiton Limited (ASX: BHP), has put unions around Australia on notice after it axed Teekay, the union-dominated tugboat provider, and replaced it with Queensland-based Rivtow.
BHP holds the right to operate all tugboat services in the lucrative port of Port Hedland and provided Teekay with the gift of being the sole tugboat operator for many years. Port Hedland is the world’s largest bulk export port that exported around 60% of Australia’s 700 million tonnes of iron ore in 2014.
Despite the slowdown in the mining and resources sectors, in 2014 the tugboat crews decided salaries ranging between $140,000 – $300,000 per year weren’t enough, launched industrial action and threatened to walk off the job. The action was supported by the Maritime Union of Australia, The Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers, and the Australian Maritime Officers Union.
At the time, Fortescue Metals Group Limited (ASX: FMG) chief executive Nev Power unleashed a stinging rebuke and said, “there is something fundamentally broken with a system that encourages a small group of employees, with pay and conditions that most Australians would envy, to hold an entire country to ransom.” The tugboat strike would have crippled Fortescue, which exports all of their iron ore out of Port Hedland.
Sometimes people don’t appreciate when they are on a good thing, and unfortunately for Teekay, the industrial action may have been a large part of BHP’s decision to switch tugboat services to Rivtow, despite BHP saying otherwise.
According to an article in The Australian Financial Review, BHP said that “Union affiliation was not a consideration in the decision to award the contract to Rivtow” and that “The contract has been awarded following a competitive tender process for BHP Billion’s largest tugboat fleet based on safety, capability and cost-effectiveness criteria.”
The axing of Teekay is a major warning for militant unions operating in the resources and energy sector and possibly a sign of things to come in the heavily unionised civil construction workforces around Australia.