I guess that gives any company the right then to seek to cancel an agreement when suddenly it doesnt suit them any more?

Mate, Qantas pilots wore a red tie and made a PA and were locked out of their work place. Do you really want to pursue that line of argument?

Yes, Australia’s IR regime may be better than most other places in the world. That does not change the fact that they’re still heavily geared towards the employer in most circumstances.

And further to this - not too many Western Democracies limit the time when employees can take their fundamental right of removing their labour (ie take strike action) as Australia does.

Not too many other countries allow the Stand Down of employees as Australia has experienced either. I have friends who work in different industries overseas, and they can’t seem to grasp the concept that the Company I work for can simply stop paying me completely at the drop of a hat.

This case could quickly become one of the bigger issues in the up coming election. It could be a gift for Albo if he played it right. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if his team is smart enough to exploit it to their advantage.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....683a5b584.jpeg
Happier times…

What a rogues gallery of puckered ar*$holes.

just never forget that whatever regime we’ve got, it was designed by Labor’s Julia Gillard while in office.

And the political alternative brought you 'Work Choices'.

Aaaaah “Work Choices” - take what you’re given or quit. That was the only choice involved. The naming of it would have done “Yes, Minister” proud, and the incessant ads in the election lead-up saying how great it was just convinced everybody how really rotten it must be! Cost Howard his job and his seat. God knows what Work Choices Phase 2 would have involved.

Of course it is, look how well it worked for the local manufacturing and car industry.

The problem for both sides of politics is that Australian salaries are to high on a global scale.We are just never going to compete globally in manufacturing or in a service industry with such a high minimum salary. However the government is just as culpable with such high levels of taxation and a vast array of government services. This argument goes back and forth over a few issues so it is not very definitive but we won't survive economically if we keep paying unskilled labour such high salaries. The reason the federal government makes business friendly arbitration is they know that salaries are to high already and if the labour are already on a high salary this drives other salaries and the cost of everything up.

As an aside it is an interesting to see on other public forums the amount of vitriol spewed out at the general cost of tradesmen/childcare/service industry. People who (I'm guessing are from Asian Heritage with the associated migrant work/study ethic) were told to work hard and study so that you don't end up in a manual labour job, end up paying a disproportionate amount of their hard earned salary to uneducated labour whilst the educated population gets hammered down with taxes, high cost of living, inflation and no real way forward whilst trying to compete with some guy from New Delhi with 3 degrees who costs 10% of your salary.

CamelSquadron is a paid shill…one of the “angels”. He or she only ever pipes up when the troops get restless and start voicing dissatisfaction with the EBA or Qantas executive remuneration.

As for Australian labour costs…what do you expect in one of the highest cost countries in the world? Its hard to pay those pesky ingrates less money when they insist on such luxuries as food and shelter.

Yes. That irony is not lost on me!

Yes, she replaced Work Choices with the Fair Work Bill when she was Deputy leader. Not great for workers, particularly since Sophie Mirabella, a vocal advocate for Work Choices, stacked the Commission (and has now been appointed to the job herself), but definitely better than what it replaced.

Ha,thought exactly the same when i saw that name pop up after many months of silence. A company stooge or a paid shill as you say is almost a given but considering who we are talking about,why should we be surprised with the re-appearance at such an opportune time.

She could have gone further but didn’t.
Her Marquis of Queensberry rules for IR produced the Qf lockout in 2011 amongst other unpleasant occurrences.

[QUOTE=neville_nobody;11179564] The problem for both sides of politics is that Australian salaries are to high on a global scale.We are just never going to compete globally in manufacturing or in a service industry with such a high minimum salary. [/QUOTE]

The problem is there are examples of countries around the world where the standard of living is both high and the population is paid well. The true problem is the great Australian political sport of taxing anyone who has the audacity to get off their arse and make something of themselves. The cost of running a business is not found in the cost of its workforce, it’s found in the minefield of BS and multiple layers of government imposed costs.

Mediation by an independent third party tasked with finding a solution which is fair to both sides is probably the way to go. QF want to screw their employees into the ground and the unions expect T&Cs which are unrealistic in the current environment, so something in between will have to do.

Australia needs to decide if it wants a Scandanavian system which tries to equalize everyone with high wages but sky high prices and taxes. At present, certain groups do well but many are on the margins, whilst taxes and prices are lower than the Nordic countries but still relatively high.

That process is in place and is being pursued now. Unfortunately, mediation cannot force an outcome or change the power or options available to the participants.

The demise of the Australian car industry is commonly blamed on Unions and Australian wages in general.

That is not particularly true.

This guy sums it up pretty well when he notes the early 2000’s mining boom and it’s impact on doubling the value of the Australian Dollar:

He goes on to say:

The reality for automotive production in Australia was that the domestic market was too small to be efficient. The only way to make it efficient was to produce more vehicles, and the only way to do that was to have a large export market - and the resources boom caused the dollar to rise which made exports unviable.

We had our moments in a potential export market. I knew a few people involved in Holden - in the early 2000’s, the Monaro, for example, was exported and was becoming a bit of a hit overseas (in various names - I think it was a Vauxhall in the UK, a Pontiac in the USA, and a Chevy in the ME, but it was an Aussie Monaro, and it was well liked. The Top Gear guys loved it.)

When you compete in a highly competitive industry in which you don’t have the advantage of low cost labour, you must compete in other ways, such as producing an awesome vehicle, like the Monaro was. The Germans obviously learned that trick early - don’t be the cheapest, just be the best. That exact argument translates to Qantas. They can’t compete internationally on cost, so don’t try. They need another selling point. High quality cabin service, particularly in the premium cabin, is something they should be prepared to pay for. That goes a little bit further than training an 18yo to ask “do you want fries with that?”.

Government subsidies are also a red-herring for the car industry arguments. This article from 2013 compared Australian subsidies to other countries. Germany subsidised at the time about 67% of our rate, and the USA about 150%. But the key metric is number of vehicles produced (and, I guess, exported - subsidies make more sense when they support national exports, that’s why we don’t even blink when subsidising mining). Germany had 3 times our population but manufactured 25 times the number of vehicles - obviously a net exporter of vehicles. German automotive employees are well paid, and their government continues to be happy to subsidise their industry.

The total Australian car industry government subsidy was around $400M/year during the decade prior to its demise. (If you had asked the average punter on the street at the time they would often have thought it was a lot more than that). We were producing about 200,000 vehicles per year, so about $2000 per car. They took most of that straight back in stamp duty at point of sale anyway. We were recently outlaying more than that per week just by doubling the dole during COVID (1.6M Jobseekers at an extra $250 odd per week). That alone over a year would have paid for 50 years of car industry support. Qantas spends nearly half that annually in it’s “marketing” budget.

That kind of puts Australia’s attitude towards car manufacturing into perspective.

It wasn’t killing the taxpayer to support the car industry, it was just that the Government decided in its wisdom that it didn’t want to do it any more. Pulling the $400M was enough to make the remaining automotive players in Australia pull out, with devastating effects on all the support and small parts manufacturing in the country.

That move apparently cost about 20,000 Australian jobs across the industry. $400M divided by 20,000 jobs is $20K per job. Given that, on average, each of those workers would probably have been paying $20K tax, they killed an industry for close to zero gain/loss on the books for the Nation.

The high ranking Government employees love it, because whilst they previously had to be chauffeured around in $70K Holdens by Government decree, now they get $400K Mercs and BMW’s because they no longer have to “buy Australian”. Even the coppers are now chasing me down the freeway in a BMW rather than a Holden, although, quite frankly, I think most of them would still prefer a Holden. Please allow me a gratuitous Blues Brothers quote: ‘It's got a cop motor, a 440 cubic inch plant, it's got cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks. It's a model made before catalytic converters so it'll run good on regular gas.”

Regardless, our Government has done its sums on manufacturing in general and decided that we are not the country for that.

We only really have 2 export industries that we do well:

1. Digging holes and sending the ore-rich diggings off-shore on foreign-owned ships;
2. Food production (planting seeds and grazing animals).

Our secondary export industries that we do well are:

3. Tourism - which we destroyed during COVID by not letting them come here; and
4. Tertiary Education - which we destroyed during COVID by not letting them come here.

(Ironically, Scomo pretty much ignored both those industries while he was writing cheques during COVID. For example, University staff were deliberately disqualified from JobKeeper because sometimes they go on to become ABC journalists).

But, the automotive industry, along with any other manufacturing we dabbled with, was never on the above list. And reducing minimum wage would not change that. What it would do, is destroy the local economy, as many punters would no longer have expendable cash to keep the local economy pumping. Be careful what you wish for.

The answer lies in finding something you can do well at and specializing in it, also knowing when to move on to something else is important.

Japan in the 1960s was a low cost manufacturing center that moved onto higher quality and prices. China is having to go upmarket as wages are increasing and countries such a Vietnam and Bangladesh are undercutting it at the lower level of the manufacturing spectrum.

QF will never be a major hub airline due to it's location and cost base, they need a selling point to persuade people to pay a little more than the lowest price they can find on Skyscanner. Safety, reliability, punctuality, good cabin fit out etc might make someone willing to pay an extra $150 for a return flight to London over which ever airline is currently having a special fare.

Being better if you can't be cheaper and cheaper if you can't be better is the way to go.