Enforcement of QF Long Haul (Pilot) award for up coming redundancies
 

One of the fleet managers was talking the other day about the need for 130-140 redundancies. My understanding is that most of these redundancies will occur on the B767

This ties in with the chief pilots recent letter.

It also indicates that Ian Oldmeadow still has almost complete control of Qantas IR policy.

As we all know, redundancies are a fact of life in aviation. Most of us have been laid off at some time or another.

However, this situation has been DIRECTLY caused by aircraft and routes being gifted to entities outside of Qantas mainline, with mainline pilots not being given the opportunity to bid or negotiate for the work.

Jetstar, Jetconnect and the new trans tasman freight operation.

So, when it comes to redundancies, AIPA must provide no relief from the provisions of the award.

This situation is a test case for the B787, where, given that it is likely Qantas will farm the 'red tail' flying out to an 'new' company designed to lower T's & C's even further, there will be up to 600-700 further redundancies.

Whilst I do not want to see ANY one made redundant, I was wondering why some Pilots and Cabin Crew where not been made redundant while most other areas of the company are unfortunately being made so. Surely there must be an excess of both at present.

Does anyone know whether redundancies are based on seniority or date of appointment?

If you think LOA 161 is contentious now, you ain't seen nothing yet.

ruprecht

Based on seniority. However the most junior SOs are on the 380 therefore they will be required to be made redundant first with SOs off other aircraft crossed trained. I am told there is a discussion paper in Qantas looking at training costs versus offering a flat one year salary payment (same as BA) to try and entice some pilots to retire/ resign. We live in interesting and difficult times.

Expect some 'Oldies' would seriously consider hanging up their goggles for 1 yrs pay in lieu, if it also included a once only option of reinstatement to be exercise after pilots made redundannt have been reinstated, but before new hires were taken on board.

Mind you, IMHO, the introduction of the GOAL would cost less and probably do away with the deed to make anyone redundant.:ok:

My thoughts exactly...makes my guts churn just thinking about it. :yuk:

How many over 60 pilots are left in the company? Surely they've had enough by now! I can hear the cries of "But I'm on my third wife" and "I lost $1million in super last year" already! :mad: :yuk:

You might also want to think about the qantaslink jet operation that is contracted out to national jet...

Transition Layer

I hope you hold the same feelings when you reach their age and hopefully still married to your first wife with your super still intact.

Fat Chance Ginger.

• Qantas B737s put into service in Jet Connect,
• Increased Jet Connect Trans Tasman services effective 10 June 09, and
• New B737-800’s to Jet Connect so it can provide greater frequency on the Trans-Tasman.

Were actually endorsed by ‘Team Bazza’. Have seen the document that Bazza and the boys accepted and included in EBA7 rollover documentation acknowledging the role of Jet Connect.

Thank the all mighty for politics! At least we can vote Team Bazza out of the house come August if they continue to rollover in the clover. :{

Farrari - Do you seriously expect logic to prevail here?

The fact that thousands of surplus non operational staff will be made redundant is a shame, but the business must prevail if the remaining staff are to enjoy secure employment.

That there are surplus pilots is irrelevant. Should the business choose to go down the irresponsible and short sighted path of making tech crew redundant, then it will be made to pay, either through huge redundancy payouts, or the debilitating cost of training and retraining in order of strict seniority.

The real tragedy here is that the pilot group are so myopic they cannot see that their intransigence in this financial crisis leads Senior Management with no choice BUT to look for other alternatives.

Imagine if there were no subsiduary businesses and ALL group pilots were on one straight line seniority list. Pilots alone could conceivably threaten the viability of the entire group. Now that would be an own GOAL.

This is a classic 'legacy' issue and one which senior management must resolve if the mainline business is to prosper in the long term.

Totally Wrong.
 

LJ has missed the essential point here.

Whilst I don't care one way or another about a 'GOAL', the reality is if QF magically decided to implement such a measure it would NOT result in terms and conditions changing BUT would allow a more efficient distribution of labour ,via an agreed system, throughout the QF group. This includes QF link I might add.

When JQI was set up, courtesy (again) of Oldmeadow, The QF mainline group was not approached to see if any of the pilots made surplus wanted to transfer to JQI on the terms and conditions as they were offered. In fact the previous CEO lied blind to Robin and Co about what was really going on. The then AIPA executive fell for said lies hook line and sinker.


The only reason we are looking at redundancies is because of the transfer of flying to other entities, and this includes the gifting of aircraft. In fact, the inability to transfer labour across the group, on terms and conditions of the companies choosing, is why the cascading seniority provisions of the LH award are about to come into play.

I have nothing against the Jetconnect or Jetstar pilots BTW, nor am I suggesting that anyone from those entities be displaced or disadvantaged in any way from this point on. Whats done is done.

QF engineered this situation, and now QF is going to have to pay to get rid of the excess mainline pilot "pollution".

The sad irony is that the cost of this enforcement to QF is going to far outweigh any savings made of crew hourly rates. This is even more the case that JQ and Jetconnect duplicate crewing and flight ops management functions to perform flying previously done by mainline.

Team bazza will save the day, with a diplomatically worded statement to the press, released weeks after the event and read by no-one.

As the founding sponsor of AIPA's GOAL, must say that I strongly endorse the logic tabled by Mohikan in his post above.

The GOAL will:

• Help maintain flying standards accross the Qantas Group,
• Save the Company money,
• Improve Job Security & Career Progress for all Qantas Group Pilots, and
• Is a prerequisite to One World Globalisation.

IMHO, AIPA members should do all necessary to make sure that the GOAL does not become yet another 'Victim of Politics'.

Regards to All

While it may be a delicate subject for some, many of the problems falling into those categories I've observed over the years in this airline are very unsurprising. On the career and money front, some of them have managed to have their cake and eat it too, while also being determined to go back for one last slice.

Back on topic, I'm a little surprised at the "140 redundancies on the 767" mentioned. I was telephoned the other day by Allocations to discuss a leave assignment and I got the impression that while transfers/demotions were being looked at, the 767 excess wasn't as high as that. Especially as they are mindful of creating big problems when the economy turns around again.

POSITIONS being made redundant is what happens when a surplus crew on type exists.

B747 classic crew POSITIONS were effectively made redundant "on type". Excluding the redundant FE's, those pilots concerned were not made redundant EMPLOYEES.

The Classic pilots were not made redundant employees with the reduction of flying on the Classic (read: zero flying) so what makes you believe the case would be handled any differently now?

Interesting situation, with every pilot on the B767 employed by Qantas years prior to the launch of Jetstar in May 2004.

Maybe all those JQ pilots who were recently singing the praises of AIPA might now sit down and reflect VERY carefully on how spending a night with the devil may result in a lifetime of regret.

AIPA has clealy recognised the possibility of QF management wanting to effect fleet redundancies rather utilising reverse order of seniority.

Whether QF would succeed in such a situation is unknown, but every Jetstar pilot needs to be aware of just where this may lead.

LED Zepp, please remind us who created this divisive strategy, the pilots or management?

Mstr Caution, redundancy occurs from the bottom up. So, it will be the most junior 380 and 744 SOs that will be made redundant first. Not the 767 pilots. They can be moved around or demoted, not made redundant.

Just as promotion creates a wave of residual training, so does demotion/ redundancy. In this respect our fore fathers were very wise in their design of the award. Of course whether QF can challenge this is another thing entirely.

So consider how many residuals are created for 140 vacant promotion slots. Now work that in reverse.....and then factor in the cost to promote everyone again when things turn around in 1-2 years time. Personally I think carrying the supposed excess is a mega cheap way of doing things.

As for the over 60s, I'd always thought that QF had to offer VR before they went for bottom up redundancy but it appears that is an urban myth. Shame because an offer of VR (and say 12 months pay) would certainly create some vacancies at the top. Heck, we'd probably end up with some promotions along the way! Even if they offered 20-30 on the affected fleets I still reckon we'd get a pretty good showing....particularly given how redundancy payments are treated tax wise.

Keg, you will find there is no mention of VR in the long-haul nor short-haul award. Only forced redundancy, short-haul has a formula, long-haul doesn't.

As a side note, VR is far cheaper than forced.

Mohikan - which manager mentioned 140 redundancies?

Funbags - Isn't that what I wrote. If a B767 aircraft is retired a pilots POSITION flying that aircraft is no more, but his/her tenure of employment is maintained on another aircraft. Just like the classic crews.

I wouldn't have thought that VR was necessarily apart of any award/EBA. Surely a company can offer redundancy to whomever they like? Aren't they effectively asking if people will surrender their protection/conditions under the EBA in return for a payout?

Can anyone explain why this is the case? I'm not disputing it, just interested as to why it would be cheaper to payout guys who are on much higher salaries (though you obviously reduce your payroll expenditure similarly).

The Long Haul Certified Agreement has a last on first off clause which would require enormous amounts of retraining in the event of redundancies. For example, if the company were to declare redundancies for FO's on the B767, seniority gives that FO the right to displace any junior pilot in any position.

This displacement can occur until that FO is THE MOST JUNIOR PILOT IN THE COMPANY. The time involved in retraining and the cost involved would be not insignificant.

Mr. Oldmeadow, if you are reading this, it would be great to see you attempt to emulate the success of the Kendall management in having this provision of the agreement overturned. You would get to relive 1989 without the resignations. Wouldn't that be fun! Go on, give it a go, I DARE YOU.

some info please
 

Heard 3rd-hand there's a clause in the last eba (or in the certified agreement) that provides/allows for redundancies that are aircraft type specific, ie, redundancies need not be applied in reverse order of seniority but on redundant fleets.
Anyone know anything about this?

Don't forget the award requires six months notice of redundancy also so we'll have a lot of notice if it's going to go ahead.

Qanchor, I've just read through section 16 of the award which covers reductions in numbers in a category in Sydney and it doesn't look like that is possible. I admit I'm no expert when it comes to our award so I may not be 100% accurate.

Well, the reduction in numbers clause specifically refers to Sydney based crew, so I wonder whether they could use that to the disadvantage of the other basings?

In any case if you're Sydney based and affected by reduction in numbers, it's reasonably clear that you can exercise seniority to displace a more junior crew member "in any category", so effectively this would mean, I assume, that it's not ultimately possible to retrench on type/rank.

Thanx keg & dutch,
Yes was sceptical of this little gem, heard it at the moon bar which probably originally came from the 2nd cousin of a Rocky baggage handler who called his refueller mate in Townsville, then later embellished with a liberal amount of vin rouge.
Would like to pass on sincere thanks and best wishes to those who've been let go from the Training Dept. Sorry to see you go.
Will put money on you guys being asked to come back when it inevitably hots up again.:ok:

Just been told that Air Nuigini wished to extend the 767 charters by another 2 weeks. Can you guess the rest. Yes, Qantas knocked it back because they didnt have enough crew. Why? Because to much leave had been asigned. You have to give it to them. Their good.

Yes, this exact topic has been doing the bar rounds among guys on the line. None of us would be the least bit surprised if they screw it up totally by forcing too many guys onto large chunks of leave just before things pickup a bit. My recent talks with the very people doing this indicated that they are assigning all 767 pilots who have any leave of any sort as much as they can each bid period.

Then they will be frantically making phone calls to beg us to hand it back.

You have to realise that the management of the company through the various different departments is quite dysfunctional. No single department or section communicates properly with any other one. This should surprise no-one.

Plus the flying plan has picked up (slightly) for the 767 from next month.

Surely they only get it back if they buy it?