Rabbitwear
4th Feb 2010, 03:05
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AIPA Insights
3 February 2010
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S VIEW – PHILIP VAN DEN HEEVER
The good news AIPA is pleased to announce that Fair Work Australia issued an order that will overcome the remaining legal resistance from the Company to more readily allow pilots to transfer between different entities of the Qantas group of airlines.
After some difficult negotiations and AIPA raising a dispute against the Company, on 22 January 2010 AIPA, Qantas and Jetstar appeared before Fair Work Australia’s Vice President Watson seeking an order relating to 'transferring employees in agreements' as per s.318 of the Fair Work Act 2009.
In non-legal speak, the effect of this order is that the alleged "impediments" that the Company has previously claimed to exist that supposedly block pilots from seamlessly transferring between airlines and instead forces them to resign and say, wait on the dole for 3 months before taking up a job in a new Qantas Group airline, has been removed.
The practical effect of this order is that if you decide to go and work for Jetstar, your terms and conditions as provided for by the Qantas Agreement won’t transfer across to your new job at Jetstar. Conversely, if you are a Jetstar pilot and you go and work for Qantas mainline, you can be sure that you will be paid in accordance with the Qantas Agreements, i.e. conditions of employment don't transfer when the pilot voluntarily does.
As you can appreciate, this issue was a difficult one for AIPA to grapple with. Clearly, we do not want to be making it any easier for the Company to push pilots out the door of mainline by offering them flying on lower terms and conditions in Jetstar, yet we are ever conscious of our overarching duty to our members: to improve your career. So to balance these competing interests, we built in two protections. The first is that in order for a pilot to transfer to a different entity and not transfer conditions, they must be given leave without pay from their original airline. Perhaps paradoxically, this has the effect of requiring pilots to have an option to return to their original airline as a condition of being able to seamlessly leave it. It also has the effect of elevating 'leave without pay' as an action of first resort for the Company to apply. Secondly, we insisted that the order expire in 12 months. This sunset clause insurance allows us to realistically assess the intentions of Qantas and not be forever bound by an order that isn’t what pilots want. Like you, we’ll be watching how Qantas and Jetstar choose to behave now that they no longer have an excuse for constraining the transfer of pilots between airlines that everyone knows are part of the same company.
The bad news
Having said the good news, it is with regret and disappointment that I have to announce that AIPA’s attempts to ensure the new vacancies announced by Jetstar recently were made available to Qantas pilots, especially those fearing redundancies, were unsuccessful. You may recall that in December 2009 Capt Wilson stated the following:
“I was notified on 18 December 2009 that Jetstar has promulgated a number of new command vacancies and will also be recruiting First Officers. Ordinarily, a number of these vacancies would have been open for application from Qantas pilots under the MOU. I am disappointed to report that this will not occur on this occasion because AIPA has not taken up an offer from Qantas and Jetstar to apply to Fair Work Australia to clear away the impediments that the new Fair Work Act has placed on the operation of the MOU. In the absence of such an order being obtained, Qantas pilots are not able to meet Jetstar’s selection criteria.”
At the time the Jetstar vacancies were open for expressions of interest, AIPA, Qantas and Jetstar were negotiating the application referred to above to clear away the alleged “impediments”. Qantas management was well aware that these “impediments” were likely to be removed long before any training was to commence with Jetstar. Despite this, Qantas refused to make those vacancies available to Qantas pilots for consideration.
Qantas’ refusal to allow Qantas pilots to apply for those vacancies was, to be frank, not only baseless, but spiteful. In a year when we are likely to see several attempts at reducing the numbers on mainline fleets, especially the B747-400 and B767 fleets, one would’ve thought it to be in the best interest of both the Group and its pilots to allow our younger members to apply for positions in a section of the Qantas Group expecting growth this year. It seems that whilst Capt Wilson and his team struggle to balance the books with budgets, routes, pilot surpluses, aircraft retirements, aircraft deliveries and pilot leave balances etc., Qantas’ out-of-date industrial strategists continue in their attempts to drive a wedge between the Qantas and Jetstar pilot groups.
Siloing the two pilot groups from an ‘industrial leverage’ point of view may be helpful, but I am more than convinced that any financial analyst worth his/her salt will have a different view when it comes to the prosperity of the Group and its two-brand strategy. One can only assume that management deem industrial leverage (and hence disharmony in the workforce) more important than valuing its product and employees. Add to this the rumours that Qantas intends to cut back on the number of first class seats on various fleets, a very bleak and uninspiring picture awaits Mr Joyce’s commitment to the loyal Qantas premium traveller. If Qantas fails to deliver a world-class service that is first class on all of its major sectors, it would find it extremely difficult to compete with other premium carriers such as Emirates, Etihad, Singapore and the like. As I have stated before in a previous edition of Altitude, the global financial crisis presented the Qantas Group with the ideal opportunity to pull together and work towards making the Group a world-beating product. Staff can, and should for it to be a success, play an integrated part in this goal if only management allows it to do so. Flight Ops management always complains to AIPA about our perceived “inflexibility” – what they fail to recognise and acknowledge is their own industrial strategist’s contribution to a perception which is stripped from reality.
:=
http://www.aipa.org.au/portals/0/templates/email/tw_mr.jpg
AIPA Insights
3 February 2010
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S VIEW – PHILIP VAN DEN HEEVER
The good news AIPA is pleased to announce that Fair Work Australia issued an order that will overcome the remaining legal resistance from the Company to more readily allow pilots to transfer between different entities of the Qantas group of airlines.
After some difficult negotiations and AIPA raising a dispute against the Company, on 22 January 2010 AIPA, Qantas and Jetstar appeared before Fair Work Australia’s Vice President Watson seeking an order relating to 'transferring employees in agreements' as per s.318 of the Fair Work Act 2009.
In non-legal speak, the effect of this order is that the alleged "impediments" that the Company has previously claimed to exist that supposedly block pilots from seamlessly transferring between airlines and instead forces them to resign and say, wait on the dole for 3 months before taking up a job in a new Qantas Group airline, has been removed.
The practical effect of this order is that if you decide to go and work for Jetstar, your terms and conditions as provided for by the Qantas Agreement won’t transfer across to your new job at Jetstar. Conversely, if you are a Jetstar pilot and you go and work for Qantas mainline, you can be sure that you will be paid in accordance with the Qantas Agreements, i.e. conditions of employment don't transfer when the pilot voluntarily does.
As you can appreciate, this issue was a difficult one for AIPA to grapple with. Clearly, we do not want to be making it any easier for the Company to push pilots out the door of mainline by offering them flying on lower terms and conditions in Jetstar, yet we are ever conscious of our overarching duty to our members: to improve your career. So to balance these competing interests, we built in two protections. The first is that in order for a pilot to transfer to a different entity and not transfer conditions, they must be given leave without pay from their original airline. Perhaps paradoxically, this has the effect of requiring pilots to have an option to return to their original airline as a condition of being able to seamlessly leave it. It also has the effect of elevating 'leave without pay' as an action of first resort for the Company to apply. Secondly, we insisted that the order expire in 12 months. This sunset clause insurance allows us to realistically assess the intentions of Qantas and not be forever bound by an order that isn’t what pilots want. Like you, we’ll be watching how Qantas and Jetstar choose to behave now that they no longer have an excuse for constraining the transfer of pilots between airlines that everyone knows are part of the same company.
The bad news
Having said the good news, it is with regret and disappointment that I have to announce that AIPA’s attempts to ensure the new vacancies announced by Jetstar recently were made available to Qantas pilots, especially those fearing redundancies, were unsuccessful. You may recall that in December 2009 Capt Wilson stated the following:
“I was notified on 18 December 2009 that Jetstar has promulgated a number of new command vacancies and will also be recruiting First Officers. Ordinarily, a number of these vacancies would have been open for application from Qantas pilots under the MOU. I am disappointed to report that this will not occur on this occasion because AIPA has not taken up an offer from Qantas and Jetstar to apply to Fair Work Australia to clear away the impediments that the new Fair Work Act has placed on the operation of the MOU. In the absence of such an order being obtained, Qantas pilots are not able to meet Jetstar’s selection criteria.”
At the time the Jetstar vacancies were open for expressions of interest, AIPA, Qantas and Jetstar were negotiating the application referred to above to clear away the alleged “impediments”. Qantas management was well aware that these “impediments” were likely to be removed long before any training was to commence with Jetstar. Despite this, Qantas refused to make those vacancies available to Qantas pilots for consideration.
Qantas’ refusal to allow Qantas pilots to apply for those vacancies was, to be frank, not only baseless, but spiteful. In a year when we are likely to see several attempts at reducing the numbers on mainline fleets, especially the B747-400 and B767 fleets, one would’ve thought it to be in the best interest of both the Group and its pilots to allow our younger members to apply for positions in a section of the Qantas Group expecting growth this year. It seems that whilst Capt Wilson and his team struggle to balance the books with budgets, routes, pilot surpluses, aircraft retirements, aircraft deliveries and pilot leave balances etc., Qantas’ out-of-date industrial strategists continue in their attempts to drive a wedge between the Qantas and Jetstar pilot groups.
Siloing the two pilot groups from an ‘industrial leverage’ point of view may be helpful, but I am more than convinced that any financial analyst worth his/her salt will have a different view when it comes to the prosperity of the Group and its two-brand strategy. One can only assume that management deem industrial leverage (and hence disharmony in the workforce) more important than valuing its product and employees. Add to this the rumours that Qantas intends to cut back on the number of first class seats on various fleets, a very bleak and uninspiring picture awaits Mr Joyce’s commitment to the loyal Qantas premium traveller. If Qantas fails to deliver a world-class service that is first class on all of its major sectors, it would find it extremely difficult to compete with other premium carriers such as Emirates, Etihad, Singapore and the like. As I have stated before in a previous edition of Altitude, the global financial crisis presented the Qantas Group with the ideal opportunity to pull together and work towards making the Group a world-beating product. Staff can, and should for it to be a success, play an integrated part in this goal if only management allows it to do so. Flight Ops management always complains to AIPA about our perceived “inflexibility” – what they fail to recognise and acknowledge is their own industrial strategist’s contribution to a perception which is stripped from reality.
:=
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