One pilot union for all Australian pilots.

[virginexcess]

DD

That gets back to my first post where we need an umbrella organisation that encompasses unions/organisations that represent pilots from specific sectors and/or Companies. Income protection/Loss of Licence/MBF funds could be amalgamated so that swapping from one representative body to another is penalty free, that way, as a pilot changes employer they can be part of the organisation that is most relevant to their employment, but still have continuation of their chosen Licence protection fund.

For us to be as effective as possible in furthering our profession, we need to speak to each management group with one voice and I believe that is done most effectively through a single representative body.

If the AFAP is indeed proposing to hang on to members that are moving to Qantas, then I would expect that will have negative long term consequences for QF pilots.

We need some progressive thinkers from all unions who are prepared to hammer out a solution to the problem. The barrier to getting this done is that most trade unions are focused on self interest first and member interest second, and I admit that would be very hard to change. The only way it can change is for members to want it and to get organised and demand it.

At present I doubt there is enough will amongst members to do it, but it starts with conversations like these and it takes time.

[gordonfvckingramsay]

How many organizations does the medical industry have to represent doctors?

[Night Bandit]

The AFAP's change to their rules was merely to enable current AFAP members from the Regionals, RFDS and GA going into Qantas to retain their membership and consequently their MBF loss of licence coverage. It was never to take over the current AIPA coverage.

[Tuner 2]

Originally Posted by Night Bandit

The AFAP's change to their rules was merely to enable current AFAP members from the Regionals, RFDS and GA going into Qantas to retain their membership and consequently their MBF loss of licence coverage. It was never to take over the current AIPA coverage.

As opposed to changing the MBF rules to allow them to stay in the MBF? Which wouldn't require a FWC dispute.

[Keg]

Bang. Tuner 2 nails it.

[megan]

most trade unions are focused on self interest first and member interest second

That certainly came across when the Norm Gallagher threat was made to us in the early '80's, the threat being the reason we dropped the AFAP and formed our own union. We gained state recognition, but not federal because of Bob Hawke's mega union policy at the time. In any event, we ended up dropping our self created union a decade later and came to other arrangements with the company. A search a few days ago found the AFAP was still ratifying our award two decades after we and the company ceased our association.

the AFAP has, in my opinion, been its own worst enemy

Amen, at least by my experience close to four decades ago.

virginexcess, can only say to your posts. Eloquently put.

[Beer Baron]

AFAP's change to their rules was merely to enable current AFAP members from the Regionals, RFDS and GA going into Qantas to retain their membership and consequently their MBF loss of licence coverage.

Retaining the MBF is a bit of a red herring. Qantas already provides loss of licence insurance to Qantas mainline pilots and you can’t claim on two policies (it’s called offsetting). So there is no need for a Qantas pilot to have the AFAP MBF.

(Disclaimer; the comments above should not be relied upon as professional financial advice, everyone’s circumstances are unique and you should speak to a licensed financial planner before making any investment or insurance decisions. As a general rule do not take financial advice from pilots and certainly not on anonymous internet bulletin boards)

[blow.n.gasket]

Originally Posted by gordonfvckingramsay

How many organizations does the medical industry have to represent doctors?

I believe there are two unions representing Doctors in Australia ,
The AMA Australian Medical Association and the
ASMOF Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation.

PS : there is an interesting past connection between the ASMOF and the AIPA too !
Not a bad question with some interesting similarities to what’s going on here Gordon.

[itsnotthatbloodyhard]

Originally Posted by Don Diego

If this one doesn't get up there will be another and another and another so hope you are in for the "long haul".

What an excellent use of industrial time and resources that will be.

[virginexcess]

Retaining the MBF is a bit of a red herring. Qantas already provides loss of licence insurance to Qantas mainline pilots and you can’t claim on two policies (it’s called offsetting). So there is no need for a Qantas pilot to have the AFAP MBF

Most pilots who want to stay in the MBF do so because of the promise of getting their contributions back when they retire. It is the single biggest factor in most pilots minds when they consider leaving the AFAP, and why the Feds are unlikely to open the MBF up to non members. They would immediately increase the risk of losing members.

This is also an insight into the psyche of pilots where they look to their unions more as an income protection provider rather than an industrial representative.

I have found it perplexing that pilots are far more concerned about a policy which very few pilots will ever utilise, than they are about the document they work under everyday.

[Beer Baron]

Most pilots who want to stay in the MBF do so because of the promise of getting their contributions back when they retire.

Ok, I didn’t realise it worked like that. I stand corrected.

[Don Diego]

Hey Lead, as previously indicated I was there (GA loser) remember? I was far more concerned with working on the sh%t sandwich that was my employer at the time but I do remember the 767 stuff and thinking how is it they want an F/E but the manufacturer doesn't?
Virginexcess, hard to disagree with one "umbrella organisation". You opine that Q pilots will be worse off in the long term if this goes ahead so are VA pilots going to be in the same boat as you have two "unions" at your place?? The thing that is amazing in this forum is the most vocal AFAP critics base their views on what happened 40 bloody years ago. I can tell you the name current AIPA president and the last few as well and have met them all too!! Lead, Baron,Tuner and Megan????
Night Bandit, yes and the whole process is being driven by MEMBERS not the staff.
Tuner, post #104 shows how out of touch you are.
Keg, missed the mark on this one.
Megan, it was the Hells Angels mate get it right or NG will haunt you.
itsnotthatbloodyhard, the union does what it's members direct it to so blame the members not the entity.
virginexcess, the FEDS have no say on what the MBF does, the two governing bodies are autonomous. The Fund would have been "opened up" as you call years ago if there was indeed any desire to do so.
Beer Baron, you ought look at the MBF rules before commenting as you have made another incorrect comment.

[Tuner 2]

How exactly does my question of changing the MBF rules versus an FWC application to change the AFAP's rules make me 'out of touch'?

If the real and sole motivation behind this is to allow former AFAP members to retain MBF access, why not just change the MBF rules to allow it?

In the meantime, attempting to dilute mainline industrial coverage across 2 unions will only serve to weaken mainline pilots' positions in bargaining that has already started in short haul and about to start in long haul. The AFAP knows nothing about mainline EBAs and I don't want them anywhere near my EBAs. There is a reason that Jetstar at its inception sought to exclude AIPA involvement and sought (and got) out a sweetheart deal with the AFAP.

[LeadSled]

---- the most vocal AFAP critics base their views on what happened 40 bloody years ago.

DD,
In the case of my views, you are clearly quite wrong. I would have thought it was clear to any reader that my experience of the AFAP, over many years to the present, was and is very negative.
It is not "forty years old".
As I made abundantly clear, this was based on technical and regulatory matters, not industrial, and the AFAP track record is long standing, consistent and generally opposed to any hint of reform, or recognizing that anything useful can be learned about aviation outside Australia's 12 mile limit.
Australian parochialism writ large.
Over many years, in my view, AFAP has been a drag on technical development.
Tootle pip!!

[megan]

Megan, it was the Hells Angels mate get it right or NG will haunt you

Obviously an apologist for the AFAP SD. Merely relating history, why would a body of people give up AFAP membership and launch ratification of their own union? If you know so much you can easily provide an alternative answer.

[neville_nobody]

There is a reason that Jetstar at its inception sought to exclude AIPA involvement and sought (and got) out a sweetheart deal with the AFAP

Sounds like some revisionist history happening here. I was always of the understanding that Impulse pilots approached AIPA at the time and AIPA turned them away for whatever reason.

[blow.n.gasket]

Originally Posted by neville_nobody

I was always of the understanding that Impulse pilots approached AIPA at the time and AIPA turned them away for whatever reason.

That’s because under the AIPA’s Constitution at the time , those pilots were ineligible
for coverage. Nothing sinister or judgemental , purely legal.

[Don Diego]

Tuner, you don't have any idea of how the MBF works otherwise you wouldn't say such things. If you can't figure out why the MBF will not "open up" their membership then write to them and ask them, I am not going to enter into the reasons here because you simply will not accept it ergo it will be a total waste of my time. In the meantime you assert that (post113) " attempting to dilute mainline industrial coverage across 2 unions will only serve to weaken mainline pilots' positions in bargaining that has already started in short haul and about to start in long haul." Is that so?? Do you really believe that?? Oh you do believe that, then perhaps you could explain why the AIPA did exactly that to the regionals back in 2004 and to VA a few years later?? Do I need to tell you the facts in both those matters or will you ring the COM and ask them??
Megan, Gallagher was so far to the left even the union movement threw him out, his only ambition in life was the complete destruction of capitalism and he (NG) saw the union movement a nothing more than a tool to get that very job done. He never had anything to do with AFAP in fact no doubt viewed them as those rotten capitalist bast#$ds.
blowngasket, so the AIPA didn't want to change their rules for Impulse but they sure as hell couldn't wait to do so when a few disgruntled EAA blokes came knocking. I wonder why that was???
So the AIPA has shot itself in the foot.The action that they took back in 04/05 and later with VA will be the very precedent that settles the matter in favour of the AFAP.

[virginexcess]

You opine that Q pilots will be worse off in the long term if this goes ahead so are VA pilots going to be in the same boat as you have two "unions" at your place??

DD

It is exactly that experience that has led me to my current thinking.

It has been my observation that there has been a lot of positives from the two unions, which has effectively been driven by competition in the market place. As a result the AFAP has had to lift its game substantially in all aspects of its operation, and it has done that admirably in most parts (my opinion).

Interestingly, the much vaunted MBF was found wanting in the face of VIPA's Loss of licence insurance, which was evidence of the complacency within the AFAP prior to the emergence of VIPA. It has been stated previously that the MBF is totally independent of the AFAP, which is technically true these days, but was not always the case. And in any case, I think it still has AFAP representation on the board (as you would expect), but I digress.

Competition between the two unions improved the services provided, but then it became clear to both unions that membership numbers would be impacted as a result of positions taken on certain Virgin issues, and both unions took that into consideration when forming positions on those issues.

I am not here to make comments on who I think was right or wrong on any of those issues, but it stands to reason that some decisions were made chasing short term outcomes, rather than developing long term strategies that would serve all pilots well going forward. Populist politics I believe is the current descriptor.

I'm not wishing to sound critical of either union for that. These are the politics that play out when a new union appears and the pool of potential members is small, but it meant that union politics drove some strategy rather than long term vision.

Now that inter-union politics seems to be less confrontational than those days, it appears to me that having two unions has weakened us from negotiating perspective.

As I stated earlier, industrial strength comes through numbers. I am not privy to membership numbers, but using the finger in the wind method, it seems membership is reasonably evenly spread across the two unions. At least I think that's what the company believes. What that means is that the Company doesn't know which union to pander to. And trust me, if they could identify one union as having the numbers, that union would have all the power.

If that situation is allowed to occur, you immediately have a split in the pilot workforce, albeit maybe only a small one. If you allow the Company to see any sort of weakness they will exploit it. If they can get the two unions fighting among themselves, it makes it just that much easier to screw the pilots.

Now, to be fair, I believe that potential threat has been managed fairly well in our case. But if you consider what would happen if one union or the other (under different leadership) started aggressively trying to poach members. Relations would break down fairly quickly I would think.

Now transpose that to QF. If the AFAP were to start muscling in on AIPA's membership base, I doubt very much that would be looked upon kindly by AIPA. I imagine there would be a fair bit of friction between the two organisations, and it would be extremely difficult to prevent that from spilling over into the EBA, as the AFAP sought to push a lopsided agenda favoring SO's, because that would be their entire constituency in the short term.

It doesn't take much imagination to see that what I have described above could happen, and in my view would take an enormous amount of consultation between the two unions to prevent it in the first instance. That was certainly the experience at Virgin where the first few EBA's were fairly confrontational.

Taking all that into account, unless there is widespread dissatisfaction among QF pilots with AIPA (as there surely was in Virgin with the AFAP) I would advocate to try and work internally with AIPA rather than invite a another union on site.

I certainly wouldn't pretend to speak for the AFAP, but I reckon if they had their time again, they would have made some changes earlier. It would not have taken much to prevent VIPA from getting a toehold, but instead they chose to fight through the courts rather than just improve their service. In the end, they improved their service anyway, and spent a lot of members money on a futile legal fight trying to stop VIPA from registering, and are financially worse off through loss of membership dues.

Now I don't pretend to have much knowledge of AIPA's history, but the previous comment that AIPA couldn't cover J* pilots due to their constitution smacks of the same sort of short sightedness that led to the creation of VIPA. Constitutions aren't that hard to change, and I suspect there may have been an air of hubris or arrogance that led to AIPA not wanting to cover J* pilots.

I get that, we are all pilots after all, and pretending we're better than the next guy is in our DNA. With my 20/20 hindsight glasses on, I think that was a mistake. But that's all it was, a mistake. We all make them, but you wouldn't want to compound it further by diluting mainline membership as well.

Again I would state that a good model is the umbrella organisation with specific rep bodies. QF could be, mainline, J* etc. Or it could be LH/SH or it could me Wide Body, narrow body, who knows. But at least you'd have one organisation to speak for you. Imagine the possibilities if we had AUSALPA WideBody that covered all Wide Body flying in Australian RPT. QF LH EBA would become the immediate benchmark and we would have a shedload of expertise to peddle it. Same if we had a AUSALPA NarrowBody, taking the best of VA and QF domestic, and the low cost arm that covered J* and Tiger. With the big picture view of improving Australian pilot conditions across the board while the opportunity exists.

Another point that I believe supports the Umbrella organisation is the cost of running unions. I would like to see our unions become more professional. At the moment AFAP and VIPA rely on a lot of volunteer workers (I'm not sure about AIPA). The problem I have with that is that volunteers are short on the ground, and the ones you get aren't always the ones you want. If pilots were paid properly for their union duties (the value they provide to their fellow pilots) I think we might get more competition for the positions. That's just a bit of a thought bubble, and I imagine there maybe some good arguments against that, but I don't see the volunteer model as being a great solution.

Cheers

[Pinky the pilot]

virginexcess; Thank you for a most insightful post!


Upon reflection; remainder of post deleted.