One pilot union for all Australian pilots.
 

The AFAP has applied to change its coverage rules to once again cover all Australian pilots. One pilot union for all Australian pilots, coverage from cradle to the grave; Student, GA, Aeromed, Charter, Rotary, Regional Airline, Domestic Airline, International Airline. Well done to the AFAP, :ok: let’s hope the legal shenanigans from AIPA don’t derail the unification process. :ugh: Progress at last.

I seem to remember that them being a Union for all meant looking after the airlines while screwing GA.

As an example they were instrumental in a non-airline operation, Cargo Masters, going out if business as it was perceived as a threat to the airlines- in spite of Cargo-masters pilots being AFAP members.

On the other hand, Ausalpa already exists as a joint venture and AIPA has coverage of many Australian pilots who are reasonably satisfied.
Why do AFAP want to start any “legal shenanigans”? (I presume they want the subscriptions from all those rich Qantas pilots!)
I think you will find this is a divisive rather than inclusive move.

I for one was an AFAP member a long time ago (well before “that year” so not involved with those “shenanigans”)
and will never be a member of them again for a number of reasons and will therefore back any AIPA moves to counter this.

I would join TWU before I would join AFAP.

And there you have it.
 

Unions like the CFMEU, UFU (Fire fighters), MUA, etc, get more for their workers and broker some pretty amazing deals.

The reasons why these unions broker good deals is that a union is only as good as it's members. Strong union members = strong union.

PISS WEAK MEMBERS = PISS WEAK UNIONS!

Pilots get onto Prune and lament how T&C's are constantly being eroded, threatened by lower cost entities, etc, and then bleat about how their union 'does nothing about it', and how it's all the 'mean managements' fault.

When someone posts about something along the lines of "let's get the unions together" or "let's have one pilot union" the first three responses (and I'm guessing around 90% of the future ones) will be how it's such a bad idea, and stick the boot into the AFAP for good measure (love how the examples used to justify this are from over 30 years ago).

All the pilot unions are weak, because pilots are piss-weak themselves.

DIVOSH!

After also being a member of the AFAP many years ago I would also go nowhere near them again.

Hopeless!

AIPA have coverage of over 95% of Qantas Pilots. They have industrial strength as a result. Decry AIPA if you like, but Qantas Pilots have the best airline agreement in this country and that didn’t happen by accident.

This move by the AFAP is just out of greed. They see what AIPA have achieved and want part of it. Just go away you useless lot and leave us with a union we’re happy with.

What a cracker of a reply Di Vosh!

Folks,
There were overwhelmingly good reasons why the Overseas Branch of the AFAP broke away, at huge cost, to form AIPA.
Many of those reasons are also the reasons for AIPA's success.
The '89 debacle only reinforced the wisdom of the reasons for the formation of AIPA.
Sadly, many of the attitudes that resulted in the OSB split and '89 have not really changed, all these years later, and industrially, there is no even a half way good reason, let alone a compelling reason, for AFAP to be granted any kind of sole coverage of pilots.
And, I would dare to suggest, it is a political non-starter.
Tootle pip!!

I don’t want to get into a slinging match however it was under the AFAP in the 1960s that the Qantas pilots got a North American style seniority based contract. It is under AIPA that the appalling (personal opinion only) deal for the 787 was done which will IMO haunt Qantas pilots for years to come.

I believe AFAP has too much historical baggage to go forwards .
There needs to be a fresh start.
Using AUSALPA as a base for this fresh start has merit I believe.
However no point in going down this road if past errors are perpetuated.
Whatever the new constitution proposes , and there has to be a new constitution to prevent history repeating , is it needs a proportional representation clause that combines numbers and financial input for example.
Will be interesting to see where this discussion goes considering the belligerence of some of the old war horses involved.

There once was just one union that represented all Australian airline pilots. There was only one prolonged industrial action conducted by that union and that was to support QF pilots. The latter, after achieving their objectives, left the union and formed their own. Enough said!!

So how many of you have been long term members of BOTH unions?:confused:
If you have not, then, respectively, you have no idea.:hmm:

The 66 dispute was indeed run by the AFAP, but I would think the “overseas branch” would have had a fair bit of input.:E
Before my time.

Perhaps AIPA should have complete coverage, that would support your idea of
“One union”.;)

I’ve been a member of both unions, AIPA in the past, and now AFAP.

So long as they work for Qantas – Plenty of Jetstar pilots are incensed with AIPA’s meddling in Jetstar. They do have their useful idiots on the subcommittee who have absolutely no control over the direction of the COM, but continue to wave the AIPA flag, running interference for them, and letting their spies into Jetstar meetings.

How many court cases did AIPA run (and lose) trying to prevent Jetstar expanding into A320’s, Expanding into A330’s, Expanding into an international airline, etc etc etc.

You would be hard pressed to find a union that has been and still is more anti Jetstar than AIPA. Any time Jetstar expansion is on the cards, the venom dripping from AIPA is barely suppressed. Every meeting that AIPA goes to in Jetstar, the details are studiously reported back to the AIPA COM to disseminate, understand, strategise, and plan counter moves. And Rated De thinks AIPA doesn’t strategise.

Oh please, what a crock. ‘Unification process’????
AFAP has not made an application to ‘unify’ the Australian pilot unions. They did not approach AIPA and offer to work together and begin a process of becoming a singular union. No, they are making a desperate attempt to snatch members away from AIPA, not for the benefit of those members but for the benefit of AFAP.

They are starting a war between unions in a time of peace. Fighting the wrong enemy. This is NOT how you ‘unify’ pilots.

Sounds like even more reasons to stick with AIPA!:ok:

Zero.

Show us a link to any of these cases you refer to.

56P,
That is quite wrong, you should do your homework.

There were multiple reasons for the split, but most came under the heading of domestic pilots being technical troglodytes, which, in many matters has not changed much, cf opposition to ICAO harmonisation, particularly in CNS/ATM matters --- just some of the changes domestic pilots opposed: glass cockpits, two pilot crews on "jets", flexible thrust on takeoff, LNAV/VNAV and moving maps for arrival and departure, wet runway V1, and, of course demanded flight engineers on any aircraft with more than 100 seats (remember Ansett B767)--- including domestic strike action you have forgotten -- or never knew.

As for "the AFAP" producing the NA style contract out of the 1966 dispute, that was the Overseas Branch (which became AIPA) and a lot of the actions of the then (domestic) President were quite counter-productive --- I know, as a junior pilot is cost me a bleeding lot, over years. The "final settlement" left most of us worse off than the QF final offer that he knocked back, and about half of us more junior F/O-S/O worse off than pre-strike conditions. All the hard work, including members personally guaranteeing the funds to get stranded crews home from around the world was OSB members, nobody else.

The split came along years after the 1966 strike. The AFAP constitution was very lopsided, the OSB members provided about 60% of the funds for less than 20% of the vote at Convention, which was completely dominated by Ansett pilots.

Yep!!, that's pretty much the attitude of too many domestic pilots, it has changed little over the years, comes from working in the aviation Galapagos in Australia.

Tootle pip!!

Isn't AFAP the outfit that convinced its members to drink the Kool-Aid and resign en masse in 1989? :eek:

It was the infamous 'don't worry, they can't do without us' negotiating strategy.

I've listened to those sad expat Ozmate tales of we shoulda, coulda, woulda for three decades now. :(

If you want to know why they (AFAP) are going down this path then just ring and ask, the load of sh&t that is offered up by the armchair experts here is lamentable.
Di Vosh, well put!!!

Why not just post the supposedly wonderful reason here??

Unfortunately while AIPA is AIPA and AFAP is AFAP there will never be a single union representing pilots in Australia, and that’s to the detriment of all of us. This is a time when we could really be making gains industrially, but it won’t happen.

As a QF pilot, why would I want to join the AFAP? They aren't respondents to my EBAs, they've never negotiated any of my EBAs and they have no expertise in my EBAs. They have no meaningful dialogue with my management. I have LOL coverage under my AIPA negotiated EBAs.... who are going to be mainline QF mainline pilot reps on the new AFAP mainline council? How are the finances/governance going to work? If afap somehow has 2400 mainline pilots members contributing 50, 60 or 70% of total subs to the afap, but only has a few votes, how well is that going to work?

AIPA is not perfect but I would rather go to some of their experts in scheduling, welfare etc than yet-to-be-named afap staff who have no knowledge of my agreement and my company.

I need to see good answers to these points before I would even half-consider the afap.

I hope the AFAP have changed their modus operandi, our GA company group left the AFAP and formed our own union after the AFAP threatened to send Norm Gallagher and his building union thugs down to sort us out.

Correct,
The then President of AIPA addressed a mass meeting of AFAP in Melbourne, trying to dissuade AFAP from taking on Bob Hawke and Co. head on. He literally had rotten fruit thrown at him, and was booed off the stage.

Sadly, but quite predictably, everything that said AIPA President forecast, came to pass.

The AFAP "logic" of "The Government can't do 1,2,4,4 and we will win" became the Government did "1,2,3,4" and the AFAP lost, with a huge personal and monetary toll to all involved, promising careers by the hundreds, thousands, summarily cancelled by AFAP.

The vitriol against all AIPA members was disgusting, because we (AIPA Qantas pilots) refused to "go out" in sympathy.

Fact is we had no sympathy for such idiotic industrial behavior. We could all read industrial history, we understood the logic of the Hawke/Kelty "Wages accord". We knew that pilot bashing, like doctor bashing, was always fodder for the popular media, no support there.

We knew the domestics were on a hiding to nothing, you didn't need to be Einstein.

Thank goodness there was not the "social media" of today, because you see in some of the posts in this thread, all the animosity of '89 lives on.

I started off as a member of the NSW branch, transferred to OSB when I got a job with Qantas, and didn't originally support the split, but was one of a group who wanted to reform AFAP along the lines of US ALPA. However, our proposal went nowhere due to the complete imbalance of voting in the AFAP constitution, the complete dominance of the domestics. Of course, my group's views were based on the point that having one union, not two, was the obviously better position, industrially.

In the end, I supported the split, because we had no choice, operating in an international competitive market we understood that QANTAS could not afford the grossly excessive costs of AFAP operational restriction. Costs just lumped on the long suffering passengers under the "two airline agreement" cost plus domestic arrangement.

Not to mention, the fact that flying in the real world, we had no fear, indeed welcomed, technological change, for far to many in Australian domestic aviation, change is anathema.

I trust this proposal goes nowhere, I hope AIPA does not have to spend a fortune to defend their position, because that would be waste, but they have the funds, and, I am sure, the will, to do whatever is necessary to defend AIPA and its member's interests.

Tootle pip!!

But its ok for AIPA - the Qantas Pilots Union, to cover Virgin pilots, Jetstar Pilots, Network pilots etc. Right......

Lots of great history lessons here, including some entertaining revisionism. Astounding that the dispute is called into play as a detractor..... really, 30 years later is AFAP still the same organisation? And what exactly did AIPA do to support their domestic brethein at that time....

AFAP are merely seeking to level the playing field for membership options. Once they have covereage of QF pilots (and they eventually will), QF pilots will be welcome to join, not forced. If you don’t want to join, don’t, real simple. I can assure you plenty will. However, unlike others, the AFAP COM structure will give you control over your own destiny.

AFAP are the only true ‘cradle to the grave’ pilot union in Australia. AIPA have historically not given a tinkers about GA or Regionals. In recent (I say recent cos to some here 30 years ago is still highly relevant) times they have inveigled their way into airline groups of ‘strategic interest’.

As we mentioned in another thread on this matter, the REALLY interesting thing is that Qantas and AIPA both oppose the AFAP application.

It could be that Qantas prefer to have a 'known known' or simply AIPA are predictable, but when management and the pilot body are on the same side of the boat a critical mind asks why.

Tuner, has there been any request for you to be in another association?? I f you want to know the reason then just ring and ask, they will talk to you despite not being a member.

Just tried to call and they aren't open today :sad: why don'y you just tell me?

To my knowledge AIPA doesn't cover Virgin pilots. They only seek to cover pilots from the Qantas Group, for pretty bloody obvious reasons.

No one has yet answered why I would want to join the AFAP as a mainline pilot? Is it cheaper? Last time I looked the AIPA negotiated 787 deal in mainline was a hell of a lot better than the 787 pay in Jetstar, negotiated by the AFAP as much as anyone else. Every other AIPA-only negotiated deal is better than any AFAP-only or joint negotiated deals.

Not trying to be difficult, just trying to understand why it would possibly be appealing. Anyone????

Arthur D
If you are going to berate people about revisionism then you had better check your facts. AIPA do not have coverage of Virgin pilots. So your talk of ‘leveling the playing field’ of membership options is complete garbage.

AIPA only cover Australian based Qantas Group pilots.

As to why Qantas would oppose the application. Well would you rather negotiate an agreement between two parties or three? Much easier to only have to find common ground once.

So you’re telling me that AIPA had / has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with VIPA?

As for your last statement, completely agree! So why does AIPA continue to seek coverage of so many airlines outside of QF Mainline? Who appointed AIPA as the Qantas Group pilot union? ( rhetorical question BTW)

Arthur D,
And what revisionism would that be??

Unfortunately, the answer is, pretty much: Yes.

And why would they, and cut their own throats, having warned, in advance, and all too accurately, of the consequences of declaring war on Bob Hawke as Prime Minister.

And everything I have seen and heard in recent years suggests to me that AFAP are very slow learners. Of course, being altogether too close to the mainstream union left in Victoria does not help. I am reminded that, for years, a particular very senior employee of AFAP harbored ambitions to Labor Senate pre-selection for the state of Victoria, which always made many of us very suspicious of his activities.

Tootle pip!!

Leakyboats - sink

"useful idiots" - Nasty little cuss today aren't you.

For what it's worth, I understand the application to cover QF pilots is
driven by a well known cohort inside the AFAP. Apparently they have lobbied sufficient committee members, but do not necessarily have the full support of AFAP Exec or President. I believe the less "centralised" structure of AFAP that allows the various sub committees more independence has led to this embarrassing
and devisive application.

Sadly, but not surprisingly true to form.

Management and the IR department are probably masturbating over this thread about pilot disunity right now.

So Tuner you have no idea at all but will comment nonetheless??Lead Sled, could you name one person in any management position ( elected or otherwise ) that was there 30 years ago?? You have also forgotten about the disdain that the OB had for non airline operations and the fact that their money was being used to support such, nothing has changed there in 37 years.Megan, the last time I heard that story it was the Hells Angels being sent around to fix the problem. Jetlike you have hit the nail on the head. Where are the red ties?? Oh and while I am at it one of you informed chaps might like to refresh my memory on where VIPA had their first office??

Why? How many Qantas group pilots do they think want to jump to the AFAP? I don’t. And I’ve not heard anybody I’ve worked with, ever, express any interest in the AFAP.

So, you're saying it happened on more than one occasion then? Norm Gallagher in our case, while at dinner with AFAP in a provincial town. Thanks for confirming it was their modus operandi at the time, early 80's.

This in spades.

Also I don't thinks there's any widespread disgruntlement with aipa. Not pretending they're perfect but I wouldn't even consider window shopping around at this point.

And, aside from mention here and there, I don't really have any idea whom AFAP are nor why I'd be interested in them.

Moving on

No Megan I am saying it is utter bulls%it that has been made up.

While ever there is an organisation called the Australian Federation of Airline Pilots and while ever there is an organisation called the Australian and International Pilots Association, there will always be two pilot unions (at a minimum) in Australia.