for those that dont know...the FAAA email address is [email protected]

If you send them an email while you are seated at the computer and want to know if they know something about some rumour you have heard drop them a line.

If you dont want to call them , just email them i am sure you will get a quick response.

Please dont paste on here and expect Qantas management, the FAAA, the AIRC or AIPA to post replies here.

It's tiresome to keep lecturing. Unions do not exist to chase down every rumour nor do they have the time or the resources. At any one time there are hundreds of rumours usually from " really Reliable " sources.

When chasing them down its like chasing a needle in a hay stack. What i generally do it pick up the phone and ring Sam Taranto, Alison Webster or BOS to check something out.

1 in 100 has some basis of truth. It's like the package. The rumours of a package started over 2 1/2 years ago. eventually a package was announced and some said...there i told you so.

Try ringing your employer first. If that fails and you think its important or that you really need to know then contact your union if you think that your employer is lying to you.

But really, there are so many things more seriously going on behind the scenes than possible changes to hotels.

Talk about galley gossip gone wild. A small number of overflow crew will be relocated at the Sheraton just down towards Macy's in the coming months. The big majority will be staying exactly where they are.

:ugh:

Exactly right Twiggs I could not agree more and that is what I was wondering as well.

I was simply interested to see if there is any substance to the rumour .We all know how secretive the company can get and other people as well.

I could not work out how Pegasus considered it a crisis and required a call on the bat phone to FAAA HQ especially considering the cost of a call from London.

I have tried that idea Pegasus' of emailing the FAAA once and it would have been quicker to use carrier pidgeon.

You should run for the FAAA elections Twiggs

Info Needed Please
 

Hello, I´m from Bolivia, ( South America), I´m not in Australia right now , and I wanted to know what requirements are needed for me ( as a foreign citizen) in order to be able to work in Qantas as a flight attendant, would I need to have the Australian residency? or even the Australian citizenship?, how could I get it? or what else would I need?, I WOULD BE REALLY, REALLY THANKFUL, IF ANYONE COULD PLEASE ANSWER MY EMAIL, I´D REALLY APPRECIATTE IT. I´ll be waiting for your answers.


THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR TIME


PS. I speak 2 lenguages, could that help me in some way?

You will need to be an Australian resident. Check out qantas.com under about us, jobs, and it will give you a link for the Immigration Department.

You must have at least "Permanent Residency of Australia" and a valid/uninhibited passport to fly anywhere on the network ie no restrictions on your passport. This includes domestic operations/MAM casual as you will be required to operate international flights. Good luck. You can still be employed on a foriegn passport but you must have the permanent residency status. Not sure about requirments for LHR, BKK or AKL base, only Australia base.

NRT has left the building to MEL SH... BOM back...

Qantas Flight Attendant Recruitment
 

Guys, have a friend looking to get into Qantas or similar and has queries regarding the international language components, what type of course you would do, etc, etc, what's best, what has worked etc? Seems some language course mobs are suggesting that theirs is the best and they are the actual mob that do the testing for Qantas.

Any suggestions welcome.

Testing is done by a University in your state. The requirement is Advanced Level 4 or higher. Google Language Test QANTAS. :ok: QF only really looking for Chinese speakers at the moment, and that is only through MAM.

Cokecropduster,

Mate ,why don't you post here the conditions and money you guys at mam get compared to us?

Other news the boys and girls up the front with Aussie air in FNQ have just told the company where to go with their eba offer.

MAM flight attendants on the latest of 3 contracts earn $27 per hour, plus about $4.79 per hour DTA.

There hours limitations are the same as short haul EBA but they are guaranteed 20 days work. That day can be as little as a standby duty. They average between 80 and 120 hours per month and are now given a roster with duties that combine flight duties and standbys. They apparently get 8 days free of duty per month but can make them selves available for additional work subject to resource requirements.

Take home pay seems to be about $1200 per week according to a friend of mine who started in November.
However, no penalty rate, no sick leave pay, no annual leave pay , no long service leave, and no staff travel.


Very little chance of career advancement, but in todays environment it seems according to my mate better than anything else available for a non skilled person.

And by that i dont mean that you dont have to have skills, but flight attendants will know what i mean.

hope that helps

Sounds better than a kick in the teeth :)

Twiggs,
Breathing is better than a kick in the teeth but you need more than just air to live on and pay the bills.
Pegasus,

What is the slipping formula or whatever you would like to call it and hours limitations for s/h and MAM?

I knew they did not get any staff travel but I did not know that they did not get paid sick leave.

As far as skills is concerned I wonder what Darths are? he started off as a journo basically.

I wonder what courses or degrees he has to qualify for his position.

Pegasus,

Thanks mate for your answer and although some guys and girls want a job working for mam doesn't sound much chop does it.

Gee at the moment I have mates who are plumbers who can pick and choose what they want and are making a packet.If I was young enough like some of these I would not bother with flying under these conditions I'd go to tech get a trade and make a motza compared to what mam are paying.

I tend to agree to you RW, if my kids were in the last stages or their education i would tell them that a skilled trade is the only way to go. Plumbing. electrical or such.

Anything that they cant do from a call centre in India or china. Or outsource.

To be honest the new visa that allow cheap labour to come in to Australia under the guise of a so called skilled shortage are a danger to the trades too.

LL, as far and MAM and short haul EBA conditions they can all be found on the short haul website and contained in detail in the EBA. Suffice to say that our slipping formula and conditions such as hours rest periods etc are vastly superior.

That is why we are being marginalised and made redundant. Over 1200 Long Haul Flight Attendants since 2000. And yet short haul via MAM casuals are growing and taking what we have traditionally thought of as our work.

Its a damn pity that the short haul union didnt mirror long haul conditions when they flew "regional" patterns. We wouldnt be in the mess we are now.

Any way life is far too short to worry about what might have been. In LH now our challenge is to attempt to get the best EBA we can under trying circumstances at the end of the year.

the most interesting fact is that it seems that the DOmestic Divisions union president who is coming back after her stint in the London base is going to Head up the Domestic FAAA following the resignation of Darryl Watkins.

Talk about jobs for the boys lol or girls as the case may be

Peg 747,

I agree with alot of what you are saying, but you mention that if SH had taken the same pay/conditions for regional you wouldnt be in the mess you are now.

Personally i think there are a whole bunch of reasons that LH is in a mess - sure, without a doubt one of them is the fact that SH have f*cked you over with respect to regionals. But hey, we also f*cked ourselves over. Hence i dont do them. If i wanted to go LH i could have.. many times. The last transfer wanted 50. The only got 46. It was the first transfer in 2 years.

Anyway, i think that SH is only one piece of the puzzle. Things like LHR base and the ever growing AKL base seems to be a major issue.

The fact that in LH the only way to get career progression is to leave QF and come back as a kiwi seems one way to get a red tie/scarf or head up to LHR.

In SH we have had 3 classes of CSM's in 2 years. Approx 15 in each and yeap... lots of ex LH crew are now in the red gear.

I have no idea what you guys are up for in the next eba but one thing would be a good fisting by QF. So i guess you have 2 choices...stick together and get ready for a good fight or start to lube up so it doesnt hurt as much.

Good luck guys.

$1200 a week will allow my family to live well and pay our bills.

M.A.M pay
 

I cant comment on pay east coast M.A.M casuals are earning but over here in Perth we are [ certainly I am] not earning anywhere near 1200 per week. My take home salary has ranged from as little as 1100 per fortnight to the most being around 1900.. Working 80-100 hrs per month. No holiday pay,sick pay,long service leave,progession to either full time or supervisory roles.No bidding, staff travel,port swaps etc,etc,etc..... all which was made clear during interview process..makes it a very short term employment prospect. Such a shame as the job is great..

it would seem that the MAM pays, are quite variable depending on the contract you are on and the number of hours you work. Given that a lot of the regional flying is actually being done by the MAM casuals they get better DTA and hence the ones doing the regional flying it seems are getting the larger pay packets.

I think the problem in WA is the same perenial problem that was the affliction of the LH base there. The lack of flying and hours.

But as my friend said to me only last night, The average income for a flight attendant who leaves flying and gets a job in the real world is about $35k pa.

Those that have a trade or their own business might do better but let's face it, when you can get a 21 year old full of beans and enthusiastic why would you employ an ex flight attendant.

The skill set of a flight attendant is not marketable elsewhere as those that thought that they would take the package and get another job have told me.

The exercise i go through every now and then is to check out the job section of the newspapers and try to find a job that comes close to the conditions and pay that i get as a long haul flight attendant. Quite frankly nothing comes even close.

I am here for the duration and hope that we can keep as much of our income and T&C as possible. I am certainly not counting on a change of government but i will be certainly praying for one :)

Pegasus,

I agree with you that it would be a tragedy and a criminal one at that if we did nothing to protect our conditions and sat back and accepted defeat as inevitable.

It appears that the pay received by MAM casuals can vary greatly. As I said yesterday in my post that was deleted that with no paid sick leave and no paid annual leave you might go well over 5 weeks with no pay packet if you were sick and then had annual leave.

Imagine trying to put food on the table and pay your mortgage and bills with that sort of disruption to your income.

This sort of timing is rare but in our job you can have an upper respiratory tract infection that stops you from flying but not working if you were a 9 to 5 person.

As WA Man has said being a MAM casual is a short-term job prospect at best and for those who would suggest here that it is not too bad I think you are living in a fools paradise.

The company supporters and spin doctors would love for us to think that the pay with MAM is good enough to live on but look beneath the surface and it is a different matter.

We have to do everything that is possible to protect as minimise any changes to our jobs because if we don’t then we might as well be pushing shopping trolleys.

Pegasus talks about skills and I ask again what skills apart from ruthlessness does Darth have? What uni degrees does he have?
:confused: