MERGED: Alan's still not happy......

[ALAEA Fed Sec]

Sorry Offchocks. I don't know much about the taxation rules and how they apply to redundancy payments. I did get VR from Qantas 7 years ago myself but didn't take much notice of it.


Finding the wind stuff interesting. Do you Pilots still go down to load control before a flight and get the weather charts? Do they give you an average wind estimation for the flight?

[Big M]

Whilst the operational workers are sliced and diced a quick look at the jobs available site reveals more managers are required - what a bloody disgrace.

I kid you not - the below are 'advertised' internally and/or externally

Principle Commercial Analyst
Manager Service Delivery
Manager Product Development (used to have great product before it was all wound up and given to EK and Crapstar)
Manager, Direct Digital Sales (oh please)
Manager, Service Quality
Manager, Resource and Operations (not many resources left, or operations)
Product Manager, Mobile Applications & Tablet (is there an IT dept? or were they made redundant previously?)
Manager, UX & Design (WTF??)
Manager, Digital Production
Manager, Commercial Opportunities (not much to manage when you don't fly anywhere to create 'opportunities)
Manager, Customer Targeting (customers used to come to QF)
Manager, Performance & Customer Insights (could this be done by the body above if required at all)
Manager, Direct Strategy & Portfolio (ergo there must be a Manager for 'indirect strategy')
Manager, Customer Strategy (refer above)
Corporate Operations Officer (this may be what's known as a secretary)
Manager, Non Flight Revenue (my personal favourite - is there a Finance dept?)


This was only after about 2 pages in (there were 5 pages total & not a coalface job to be seen)
I'm absolutely not joking (I wish I was), as at this rate I can't see a reduction in staff total. Of course LGA will be correct - there will be a "reduction" of 5,000 jobs (pilots, engineers, hosties) but these will be balanced by employing an extra 5,000 managers and consultants.

The gravy train rolls on - laying track on sleepers created by bodies of pilots, engineers, ramp and terminal staff, cabin crew etc.
Don't forget all these Manager roles come with endless first/business class travel, Q club membership, car leases, i-phones, laptops, lunches at Stonepool and on and on it goes. I wonder what the good Senator would think?? No wonder the Mad Monk Tony said a big fat NO to a loan, as this crap above is the kind of stuff it would've been spent on.

The wreck is coming kids - NO aircraft left, NO 787's or A350's coming means no revenue and the pigs with their snouts in the trough are fast swilling the last of the cash reserves. Oh the humanity.

I wish this wasn't true.


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[SOPS]

Hang on...I thought the plan to save Qantas was to get rid of 5000 people? And as the airline shrinks, what are all these managers actually meant to manage? It all leaves me speechless.

[Dash1]

Pilots - Reduction in Numbers..........RIN
Aircraft - Reduction in Numbers..........RIN

It's really very simple maths advertising those vacancies. Those positions would allow a company to manage the desperate undersupply of managers to manage the oversupply of pilots due to the undersupply of aircraft. Put simply a management EIN is what's needed.

Expansion in Numbers

[OneDotLow]

Fedsec said :

Finding the wind stuff interesting. Do you Pilots still go down to load control before a flight and get the weather charts? Do they give you an average wind estimation for the flight?

It's all pushed electronically to our iPads nowadays. The weather package includes wind charts/satellite images etc. Generally there is also an 'overall wind component, figure on the flight plan.

[*Lancer*]

You'll likely find that those advertised roles are actually consolidating several into one, rather than extra positions. That's how reductions in manager numbers get achieved...

i.e. 1 new position to replace 4 old ones. They get advertised so there is an element of process for who stays and who goes.

[Blueskymine]

Or they are hiring more people so they can find 5000 employees to sack!

[Metro man]

If you join two departments on order to reduce personnel numbers then you need a new layer of coordinating management to oversee the new department. This enables you to reduce the numbers of lower level staff while increasing the number of managers.

Parkinson's Law comes to mind in the case of QF. Bureaucracies expand over time, the British Colonial Office had it's greatest number of staff at the time it had the least number of colonies to administer. Therefore QF should have its largest number of managers and administrators at the time it has the lowest number of aircraft and routes.

[ALAEA Fed Sec]

Five years ago, each Engineering tarmac department had one manager.


Around that time they appointed an additional one to each department as his backup called an Ops manager.


Earlier this year they decided that the main manager need more Ops managers. They increased the number to four.


Along with the Ops managers, they also decided to create a new manager of airworthiness in each section.


What was a department with one manager overseeing about 150 staff (with foreman and senior Engineers) five years ago is now six managers overseeing a reduced staffing compliment (maybe 100 per section).


The increase in managers alone is 500%. Qantas were making money five years ago and now they are not. Anyone think there may be a connection?

[CaptCloudbuster]

Look on the bright side

What was a department with one manager overseeing about 150 staff (with foreman and senior Engineers) five years ago is now six managers overseeing a reduced staffing compliment (maybe 100 per section).

At least the time interval for oil replenishment shouldn't be mismanaged

[ALAEA Fed Sec]

Many if the new managers are duds and I mean real incompetent fools. One of the new appointees at a recent meeting had to ask what "AOG" stood for and saw a list with aircraft regos and didn't know what they were. Yep, the oils are now in good hands.

Ps. The above examples are no exageration

[Kharon]

Food for thought - Ben Sandilands – Plane Talking - today.

Is an ideological agenda destroying the future of Boeing

This is not a story about Boeing versus Airbus. It’s about the view in management schools that an unhappy, insecure and more anxious society is better for capital than one that is happy, cooperative and mutually reliant on common objectives

[Qantas 787]

Have to agree with Ngineer - way too many managers to start with and yet we still need more managers.

Love to know the salaries for all those people they are employing - probably enough to cover 3 or 4 other workers.

[Ngineer]

With ref to Mr Sandilands article...

The most perplexing thing about Boeing for those watching its affairs from the ‘outer darkness’ of the rest of the world is the intensity of the ideological hatred from its management for its Washington state based workforce.

I remember a few years back (not that long ago) coming to work on a dark and early morning to find our cleaner buddies locked out of the main gate. On entering the tarmac at security, I was greeted by some HR staff who were checking all workers to ensure no cleaners entered Sydney airport. I was oblivious as to what was going on at the time.

What I saw on the tarmac was a lot more disturbing. Men in smart casual attire, nice & expensive 4wd's, they were high fiving each other on the tarmac whilst organizing teams of workers who were there to take the place of the employees locked out.

I mention this because it was obvious to me at the time that this was no longer a matter of business. Things had become very personal, and emotionally toxic. A deep resentment seemed to have set in between these people managing the lock-out and the employees.

The article I read reminded me of this.

[Stalins ugly Brother]

Love to know the salaries for all those people they are employing - probably enough to cover 3 or 4 other workers.

It's not so much their salary that concerns me, I think the salary will be the norm for that similar position at other organisations. It will be the perks like staff travel high priority tickets and higher uplift category tickets to first class that long time suffering Staff/crew with now lower uplift categories can rarely access most times of the year due to these individuals.

It will be just another opportunity to water down staff conditions and benefits to line the pockets of managers and fat cats with their heads in the pigs trough...

[Mhayli]

Don't know if this has been considered in the last 210 pages, and not withstanding any of the other issues raised, what effect has fleet diversification had on Qantas' cash problems? I vividly recall, and a google search confirms, that many aviation commentators at the time attributed at least some of Ansett's demise to their highly diverse fleet - namely a combination of Boeing and Airbus products. At one time, Qantas was a 747 operator only. Now, they have a fleet as diversified as Ansett did. I know people will make the comment that other airlines have diverse fleets and don't have the same problems as Qantas, but Australia has a small population base to draw skilled and qualified workers to maintain and operate aircraft. When you have to employee Airbus and Boeing certified LAMEs and pilots, surely it just makes it harder and more costly.

[Jetsbest]

Another angle to the 'excess number of engineering managers' story?

Managers are often on contracts with 'renewal periods', KPIs and dismissal clauses etc.

Such contracted positions have been used in other industries (eg mining) to get 'unionists' onto 'better' terms & conditions for several reasons;
1. in the short term the conditions may actually be better,
2. it erodes union influence,
3. if people accepting the contract are good at what's asked of them they can be promoted up the organisation, and
4. if they're not great (or really were always surplus-to-requirements) they can be KPI-failed out of the organisation in just a couple of years anyway.

Evidently, it's much easier than explaining the problem, making a case for change, and then using leadership to bring 'the people' with you.

[TIMA9X]

Have to agree with Ngineer - way too many managers to start with and yet we still need more managers.

Yep, they stick together, it's the way they are bred these days, an epidemic. All you got to do is pick the Uni, find a suit and learn the jargon, no hands on experience required.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-3...fb-profile.jpg

and then they are all very happy together.

Alan's Happy Again - YouTube
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[cattletruck]

It's not their fault, it's what the teach them at management school nowadays which is to break a problem down into smaller parts and delegate more managers to it. That's also how they improve their individual KPIs.

Of course, if there was someone in there that actually knew how to run an airline then the problems wouldn't seem to be all that difficult to manage.

[Keg]

Senior pilots 'holding out' for 2 years VR are deluding themselves.

Firstly, any RIN from the 744 will likely create a maximum of about five subsequent training pathways.... Perhaps less depending on who goes where in subsequent fleets. If we allow $50K a go, that's $250K. Add on the CR component for the S/O that is going to get the chop and you're looking at somewhere in the vicinity of $300K. I'll be generous and allow &350K. One year pay for a 744 driver is probably circa $300K. So financially, it's a line ball call as to whether Qantas is better off dealing with the training costs or offering any more than $350K. They're certainly not going to offer $600K which is roughly two years pay.

Of course, you could argue that Qantas should factor in the retraining costs that they will need to pay in a few years time when movement starts again (plus the training if the redundant S/O wants to come back or the new S/O) but since when has Qantas looked that far ahead when it comes to spending money.

Redunandancy and tax is a complex area and when you take redundancy is very important. Let's say someone takes a $350K package on 1 Jul. The way in understand it is the first $125K(ish) for someone with 25 years of service is tax free and is considered exempt. Monies beyond that are then an eligible termination payment and subject to the lessor of that cap or the whole of income cap. I think (and happy to be corrected) that the remainder of the payment is subject to concessional tax rates- $225K would result in paying tax of circa $100K. If they take the redundancy at the end of the FY then they're going to be nailed for 46.5 cents in the dollar for every cent beyond the $125K as they will have earned $300K+ and then taken the ETP as well but their 'whole of income' cap is going to nail them Certainly, the tax implications of getting two years pay are significant- calculate the tax on $475K.

So if they get $350K, they're going to clear about $250K- about what they'd clear in 16- 18 months of work. If they get $600K they're going to clear about $360K- about two years of work. Both those examples presume taking the payout on 1 Jul.

Here are a few other points worth making.

767 captains to be demoted will be lucky to have seniority for A380 F/O. The reason for this is that with a 744 RIN displacing all the LH PER A330 commands and 30ish in Sydney, that there could well be 30ish Sydney A330 captains looking for a place to go- A380 F/O is the obvious decision unless they go for a 737 slot. That will trigger a RIN on the A380 F/O ranks also although increased flying hours will absorb some of those numbers. Junior A330 Captains as well as junior A380 F/Os need to be eyes wide open as to the implications of this process on them.

The training department will struggle for capacity. In the next 12 months there are at least 150 767 pilot training pathways- the vast majority of those between now and the end of January next year. Then there are the (rumoured) 40 744 captains and F/Os resulting in another 80 training pathways. We'll potentially need an A380 F/O RIN as well as an A330 F/O RIN-adding potentially another 60 ish pathways.

Anyway, those are my thoughts for the time being. Not as clear as I'd like due to editing hassles on the iPad but you get my drift.