QF Group Ground Handling Cuts
Owning expensive equipment or employing people directly is only justified if full use is being made of the resource, there are three levels:
1. Employ the minimum number that can be fully utilised and contract in when extra is needed.
2. Employ the average number used and contract in or out depending on the workload.
3. Employ full coverage and contract out to keep busy during downtime.
Foreign airlines with a single daily flight simply cannot justify maintaining full time support at the destination and often contract out most of the functions whilst retaining their own station manager. Non competing airlines or members of the same alliance often support each other.
Once airlines get a taste of outsourcing it doesn’t take them long to go a step further and contract out everything they can possibly save money on. An airline can be “virtual” and need only employ a few managers directly. Aircraft can be leased, maintenance, ground handling, catering, call centre, reservations, simulator hours etc can all be put out to the lowest bidder.
Problems arise when asked to support a direct competitor, possibly from another alliance. This is where independent ground handlers come in, remember QF refused handling to Tiger Airways when they started domestic operations in Australia.
1. Employ the minimum number that can be fully utilised and contract in when extra is needed.
2. Employ the average number used and contract in or out depending on the workload.
3. Employ full coverage and contract out to keep busy during downtime.
Foreign airlines with a single daily flight simply cannot justify maintaining full time support at the destination and often contract out most of the functions whilst retaining their own station manager. Non competing airlines or members of the same alliance often support each other.
Once airlines get a taste of outsourcing it doesn’t take them long to go a step further and contract out everything they can possibly save money on. An airline can be “virtual” and need only employ a few managers directly. Aircraft can be leased, maintenance, ground handling, catering, call centre, reservations, simulator hours etc can all be put out to the lowest bidder.
Problems arise when asked to support a direct competitor, possibly from another alliance. This is where independent ground handlers come in, remember QF refused handling to Tiger Airways when they started domestic operations in Australia.
I don’t need to explain what we go through to get onto the flight deck of an airliner and stay there, we deserve what we earn.
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I think you’ve over-simplified it.
If, pre-COVID, Alan had made ALL 2500 ground staff redundant and effectively hired most of them back through contracting companies, whether these companies were owned by Qantas or not, he would have been highly in breach of Australian workplace law. Qantas would have been taken to court, and lost. There is plenty of case law for this. (Yes, the equivalent can be legally achieved over time through a thousand cuts, but not in a case lot like this).
He is doing it now, presumably on the basis that these people don’t have “useful work” anyway. So he has, effectively, found a loophole that he can capitalise on, free of litigation. In the “crisis”, he has discovered something to his advantage that he never would have been able to do otherwise.
The Australian concept of “stand-down”, which was only intended for a short-term stoppage, is gathering new consequences daily. This move is not in the spirit of “keeping jobs” as publicly advertised by Alan. This move is an opportunistic “don’t waste a crisis” kick in the guts for all Qantas staff, and I hope the TWU expose him for it in the media. I actually thought he was doing well until now.
If, pre-COVID, Alan had made ALL 2500 ground staff redundant and effectively hired most of them back through contracting companies, whether these companies were owned by Qantas or not, he would have been highly in breach of Australian workplace law. Qantas would have been taken to court, and lost. There is plenty of case law for this. (Yes, the equivalent can be legally achieved over time through a thousand cuts, but not in a case lot like this).
He is doing it now, presumably on the basis that these people don’t have “useful work” anyway. So he has, effectively, found a loophole that he can capitalise on, free of litigation. In the “crisis”, he has discovered something to his advantage that he never would have been able to do otherwise.
The Australian concept of “stand-down”, which was only intended for a short-term stoppage, is gathering new consequences daily. This move is not in the spirit of “keeping jobs” as publicly advertised by Alan. This move is an opportunistic “don’t waste a crisis” kick in the guts for all Qantas staff, and I hope the TWU expose him for it in the media. I actually thought he was doing well until now.
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Shots fired between Qantas and TWU this morning over ground crews.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/comp...07-p55t4x.html says "Qantas developed a plan 10 years ago to outsource all airport ground handling work by 2020, raising questions about its claim that last month's move to sack all 2400 remaining ground workers was a consequence of the COVID-19 crisis."
TWU's Michael Kaine "seized on the document as "utterly shocking" evidence that Qantas wasn't sacking more because of the pandemic but as part of a "pre-arranged plan".
"This revelation shows the outsourcing of Qantas' entire ground operations is not based on any rational thinking but shows a senior management team out of control and targeting a group of workers," Mr Kaine said."
But a Qantas spokesman said the idea the job cuts were in the works for 10 years was a "conspiracy theory that ignores the reality of what's happened to aviation in the past six months".
The spokesman said "virtually every airline around the world" had outsourced their ground handling work over the past 10 to 20 years, so it should not be surprising Qantas considered it in the past.
"But that’s not why we're considering it now," he said.
"We were hiring into Qantas ground services as recently as February and making long-term investments in new ground handling equipment. We wouldn’t have done that if we had plan
to outsource it."
The airline says COVID-19 travel restrictions will blow a $10 billion hole in revenue this financial year and it has adopted a cost-cutting program that intends to deliver $15 billion in savings by 2023.
"We have to find ways to do things more efficiently and outsourcing our ground handling to specialist providers could reduce the cost of this function by around 40 per cent," Qantas' spokesman said.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/comp...07-p55t4x.html says "Qantas developed a plan 10 years ago to outsource all airport ground handling work by 2020, raising questions about its claim that last month's move to sack all 2400 remaining ground workers was a consequence of the COVID-19 crisis."
The airline said in August that outsourcing Qantas and Jetstar baggage handling, aircraft cleaning and ground crew work to third-party contractors at 11 major Australian airports would save it around $100 million a year as "part of its COVID recovery plan".
But an internal company document from 2010 obtained by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age shows that Qantas had long considered the move as a way to simplify the business and cut costs.
The "private and confidential" document outlines a "2020 Vision" strategy for the airline which includes "BTW (below the wing) ground handling exited" by this year.
The document outlines that the strategy would deliver a "quantum reduction in staff numbers" at airports and enable Qantas to be "more focused on process rather than people management".
Qantas management canvassed the strategy internally in 2010. While it is unclear whether the company adopted the "2020 Vision" strategy in full, the document shows outsourcing all "below the wing" work has been part of the executive team's thinking since before the bruising 2011 industrial dispute.
But an internal company document from 2010 obtained by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age shows that Qantas had long considered the move as a way to simplify the business and cut costs.
The "private and confidential" document outlines a "2020 Vision" strategy for the airline which includes "BTW (below the wing) ground handling exited" by this year.
The document outlines that the strategy would deliver a "quantum reduction in staff numbers" at airports and enable Qantas to be "more focused on process rather than people management".
Qantas management canvassed the strategy internally in 2010. While it is unclear whether the company adopted the "2020 Vision" strategy in full, the document shows outsourcing all "below the wing" work has been part of the executive team's thinking since before the bruising 2011 industrial dispute.
"This revelation shows the outsourcing of Qantas' entire ground operations is not based on any rational thinking but shows a senior management team out of control and targeting a group of workers," Mr Kaine said."
But a Qantas spokesman said the idea the job cuts were in the works for 10 years was a "conspiracy theory that ignores the reality of what's happened to aviation in the past six months".
The spokesman said "virtually every airline around the world" had outsourced their ground handling work over the past 10 to 20 years, so it should not be surprising Qantas considered it in the past.
"But that’s not why we're considering it now," he said.
"We were hiring into Qantas ground services as recently as February and making long-term investments in new ground handling equipment. We wouldn’t have done that if we had plan
to outsource it."
The airline says COVID-19 travel restrictions will blow a $10 billion hole in revenue this financial year and it has adopted a cost-cutting program that intends to deliver $15 billion in savings by 2023.
"We have to find ways to do things more efficiently and outsourcing our ground handling to specialist providers could reduce the cost of this function by around 40 per cent," Qantas' spokesman said.
