Red Rat Integration

[ftrplt]

Mudskipper, slightly off topic now, but the most unusual thing I found about the whole Qantas pay structure (after coming from the RAAF) is that pay scales have any basis on the size (based on so called productivity improvements) of the aeroplane. Why should they get paid more to fly the 737-800 just because its bigger???? Why do 400 crews get paid more than Classic crews who work harder??

Its one of the reasons they will continue to have dramas with new types as the pilots always expect a pay rise to fly it!!

[Back Seat Driver]

ftrplt..... It's called 'Payload Range formula' and it has been used as the yardstick for payscales in the airline industry since Adam was a boy. If it goes Bigger, Faster or Further, one might quite rightfully hope for a little more compensation.

[Mud Skipper]

ftrplt,

So should we pay a Dash 8 Crew the same as the 744 Crew? I don't think so, it really comes down to the earning capacity of extra seats and ego. It's interesting to look at some operators like Dragon Air whom I believe have a fleet pay system. This certainly works to the company advantage by reducing training costs. We unfortunatly don't have this system and it's generally accepted in Qantas - bigger aircraft = more money. Apart from the 737 doing infinatly better than the 76 on domestic ops.

(Not having a go at you Dash Drivers, you do a great job keeping off golf courses and your return on investment speaks for itself.)

[ftrplt]

I do understand the system has been around and accept that it is the Status Quo, but I also find it in a pure sense to be illogical. This comes from my experience in the RAAF where all pilots got paid by rank and years of service; the aeroplane type is irrelevant. All Im really trying to say is that I believe it to be a real cause of a lot of the problems today where Qantas is being forced to be more competitive to make a dollar (i.e cut costs). Introduce a more efficient aeroplane and have to pay people more to crew it!!

Financial compensation for services provided should consist of a skill payment, qualification payments, lifestyle payment (i.e time away from home, on call, weekends etc) and market-forces payment.

Im not saying a Dash CAPT should get the same as 744 CAPT; what I am saying is that a 737 CAPT should NOT get more just because he is now required to operate an 737-800 vice a 737-300. What I am saying is that a Classic S/O (who holds and maintains 2 licences) should NOT get less than a 400 S/O (who holds and maintains one licence and sleeps twice the length of time!).

Do I think the system will change, NO because as you say its been around for a long time. My only point is that it is a major cause of the problems. Its no suprise the A330 conditions arent out yet.

By the way, I thought the Australian conditions are good! (I cant help get the feeling that airline pilots sometimes need a reality check; must be my RAAF experience shining through again)

Enough of the hijacking of this thread, I would be more than happy to continue in a new thread or on Qrewroom if you want.

[balance]

This is an email that I have received from "Four Points" today, I assume with regards to my above post.

"You must be Mr Diamond. You don't need to worry about my grammar. Congratulations on employing all your mates."

Email:[email protected]

Very poor form, Four Points. You should have the balls to write your nasty little comments here for everyone to see, not just Email them where they aren't public viewing.

BTW, I am not Mr Diamond, and I don't necessarily agree with what he has done. But I certainly don't agree with YOU!

[Going Boeing]

Back Seat Driver - The Payload range formula has not been used in negotiations between QF and AIPA for approx 15 years although seat mile costs do factor in negotiations.

Mud Skipper - It's very difficult to negotiate an increased salary for the B737 pilots to fly the -800 when they are already earning more than the B767 pilots ( the B767 obviously has lower seat mile costs). The A330 pay has been agreed and is significantly better than B737 pay and is in fact better than B747 Classic pay (probably not as good as A300 pay had that aircraft continued in service as A300 pay was on par with B747-400 pay - except for overtime).

Overall, AIPA has been very effective in negotiations during very difficult times and I believe that the interests of regional pilots would be better served if the AFAP was to relinquish their coverage of QF related regionals so that AIPA services would be available to them.

[Pimp Daddy]

Overall, AIPA has been very effective in negotiations during very difficult times and I believe that the interests of regional pilots would be better served if the AFAP was to relinquish their coverage of QF related regionals so that AIPA services would be available to them.

Whether it would go as far as AIPA taking over the representation of the regional pilots is hard to say, but there should at least be much more co-operation between AIPA and the Feds as it's inevitable that QF will start to play the 2 organisations off against each other.

A joint game plan is critical, instead of political bollocks.

These organisations are there to represents the wishes and interests of the workers, not just the Executive councils.

[Back Seat Driver]

fighter pilot.... There is a lot of sense in your argument, though I humbly disagree. Unfortunately Industrial bargaining in our system is adversarial, ....they want, ....we want, ....and hopefully somewhere in between is common ground as in EBA5. What we don't need is union apologists for the company line exhorting us to sympathise with the companies situation. QF retain a large group of hard-nosed tacticians to screw everything they can from the pilot group, and we most definitely should return the complement. When all the deals are done, hopefully we will walk away secure in the knowledge that they respect us as we respect them. Re Qrewroom, I've discovered that the 'enlightened intelligencia' are not so benevolent to those of us who may occasionally disagree with their line. This forum is my preferred site for open and forthright discussion.(with a little bit of spice and intrigue)

G B ...I stand corrected..

[ftrplt]

BSB, I dont disagree at all. I guess Im just showing the sheltered side of the RAAF (and I guess underpayed!!)

[djembe56]

Back to the original subject....I'm making a few basic assumptions here, correct me if I'm wrong.

1. Qantas, SAA, Impulse, Eastern and Sunstate are all seperate companies.
2. I understand that Qantas owns SAA, Impulse, Eastern and Sunstate
3. A job with one company, doesn't automatically entitle an employee to a job with another company

It seems to be widely acknowledged within the industry, and certainly by the comments which have appeared on PPRUNE, that if you work for a regional you have little chance of getting into QF mainline. Apparently Qantas doesn't like taking pilots from its regional group because it's already paid for their training once, and doesn't want to do it again.

Qantas surely has an EEO policy and is subject to the same anti-discrimination legislation which covers every type of industry in this country.

I would have thought there would be a strong case for a group of pilots (or perhaps a Pilot Council) to challenge Qantas in the courts on this one as it appears that regional pilots are being discriminated against.

It would be interesting to see Qantas explain in court exactly why a regional pilots doesn't make the grade considering they're all flying Qantas aircraft.

[Back Seat Driver]

dj.. I'm with you... Unfortunately we have this impediment to benevolence called a 'seniority system' love it or hate it, doesn't matter. Alas QF won a court case to prevent this movement happening, the dollar is mightier than the sword.
I'm 100% for the regional drivers being able to progress through all QF aircraft.
Anyone who disagrees is an RRRRsole.

[positivegee]

dj, the AFAP fought the integration case in the mid nineties. QF and the Regional GM's major argument was the cost of retraining and the movement of staff would severely hurt the companies. The IRC (in their wisdom) based their decision on a similar integration issue that had been decided years earlier between NSW Rail and its employees. In this case the employees wanted integration from one type of train into another type operated by NSW Rail (I'm sorry, I don't know the exact details). In the end, the IRC decided that the NSW Rail employees shouldn't have integration. The IRC applied the same rules to the QF integration issue and thus the AFAP (along with all QF regional pilots) lost the fight.

This raises several points:

1) Why did the IRC use the NSW Rail case as its benchmark considering there had already been many years of successful integration within airlines in Australia and overseas?

2) The cost to QF for the loss of expertise, loyalty, experience and company knowledge when a QF regional pilot resigns to join a competitor airline surely must far outweigh the cost of retraining,

3) Companies like Cathay, Dragon, Impulse, Virgin, BA etc must be clicking their heels at the thought that they have access to a large group of highly skilled multi-crew pilots, trained under one of the best (QF approved and overseen) cyclic systems in Australia, using an advanced (CAT5 ??) DHC-8 simulator. These companies have been snapping up QF regional pilots by the bucket loads for the past 5 years.

4) It appears that QF don’t want integration NOT because of the training costs (which would be less because the regional pilot is already in the system, and which would be incurred regardless), but because of the fight they put up against EAA and the AFAP over the integration issue, and the QF managers and regional managers would rather lose their talented pilots to other airlines rather than admit a mistake they made in the nineties!

Food for thought

[Bonzer]

Positivegee,

You are quite correct !!

In recent times Sunstate Airlines have lost approx. 35% of their pilot body to other airlines because of a lack of career progression. A recent survey amongst the pilot body found that another 38% are actively looking elsewhere for the same reason. This places a large strain on the check and training department just to maintain the status quo. This is an uneccessarily expensive exercise with no resultant gains for the money and effort expended.

The ability for Q-Link pilots to move within the Q-Link system would effectively cease this movement.

Until we see a common sense approach to career paths for Q-Link pilots it gives a certain ironic pleasure to see pilots move on knowing they take with them the very substantial investment Qantas has made in them, to the benefit of other airlines.

Each pilot resignation leaves a legacy of further training and additional cost to the company. A cost they seem happy to incur.

Bonzer

[spinout]

QANTAS the UNEQUAL OPPORTUNITY COMPANY !!!

Pay Freeze: You are part of the group

Promotion within the Group: You work for the regional

Staff Travel the same as Mainline: You work for the regional

Superanuation the same as Mainline: You work for the regional

[How's it Hanging]

Back to the original subject.
It is stupid and shows poor management skills by all of those regional managers with different titles (most it would seem deserve the sack for their handling of this), that with 6 months or so to think about this, they did not have positions already available for all Southern staff in other parts of the company.
All areas of the company, from mainline, other regionals, maintenance and ground staff, seem to be constantly employing more staff. To think that they could not offer positions to all Southern staff seems ridiculous.
And for those that state that the pilots should have to go through the Qantas recruitment process do not understand why minimum requirements are set for new employees.
It is to get a base line to start for those that Qantas have no previous record of their performance and experience as a pilot. As previously stated, regional pilots are in a Qantas cyclic program, so are of a known standard.
To suggest that they should have to meet the minimum requirements should also mean that every Qantas pilot that has not gone through the current selection process (which is constantly changing), should have to re-apply and pass all the current requirements, otherwise they are out of a job.
I guess would mean that more than more 50 percent of the current mainline pilots should be out of a job because they did not do physics at HSC and have not passed the psych, IQ and skills test. I bet it would not leave many longhaul captains in a job, because, as testing in this area has shown, most of them who were asked to do the test failed some part of it.
Obviously, commonsense is not a requirement for Qantas management, and all of us that fly somewhere for Qantas have to put up with it!!:o

[Aragorn]

HIH spot on, except your last statement.

IMHO we don't have to take it; and are showing that it is so by walking out and into other jobs. As quite a few airlines are pulling thru post Sept 11, Qantas is sticking to its historical '180 degree out of phase with the industry' attitude and management technique. When everyone else is hiring they'll be firing.

Watch this space.

[djembe56]

Thanks Positivegee & others

So, did Qantas win the court case because of the cost of training per se, or because the cost of training was deemed to be too high? Regional FAs have integration into Qantas - there you go, there's a precedent.

If the cost of training was deemed to be too high, surely there must be some sort of benchmark figure that was used. And surely that's making the assumption that all regional pilots need to be retrained at a high cost - what about the large number of regional pilots who have a considerable amount of jet time - wouldn't the cost of training them be less than if they had no experience at all?

I still think that if large numbers of regional pilots applied for positions with Qantas (not as part of an integration process but as applicants applying for a new job with a different company), and were knocked back, then there surely would be a case to present before the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner.

[positivegee]

DJ

As I can remember, part of the IRC decision against direct integration was based on QF giving precedence to QF regional pilots (which QF had promised in the IRC). About 250 seniority numbers were set aside and regional pilots were encouraged to apply. Many (most) who applied (and had the minimum education standard and passed the psych, skills, and sim ride) were put on "active hold", around 15 pilots were given jobs AND (this is a big "and") kept their seniority and all of their accrued company benifits. The rest were kept on hold for about 1 month (what a rediculously small hold time!) and then were told, "sorry but we now have more applicants who more closely meet our requirements, please DO NOT RE-APPLY", and were dropped off the hold file like hot potatoes. Recruitment from the regionals then virtually stopped. This whole "mini" recruitment exercise by QF appeared to have been only to legitimise QF's promise (to the IRC) to give priority to regional pilots. The pilots in the regionals could see what it realy was...a farce.

Several years later, when Capt Nepotism (B@rry Di@m0nd) was running the show, QF was a bit short of pilots and once again encouraged regional pilots to apply but this time the rules had changed. Now, all applicants had to sit the new computerised tests AND PAY about $150 for the pleasure of doing so (regardless if you had previously passed everything), but if you made it in, you would no longer keep your seniority (you could take long service, sick and holiday leave though). Most pilots who had made it on to the hold file previously now found that they failed to pass the psych test and thus were rejected.

This whole process has damaged the aspirations of plenty of excellent regional pilots who would have made great QF pilots and indeed lots of these people have left and gone to other airlines.

It seems to me that when moralle was low in the regionals, the regional Chief Pilots would stir up the old QF recruitment issue (carrot) to get a bit more life from the troops.

The sadest thing for QF is that most of these employees have bitter memories of how QF and the QF regionals unfairly treated them on this issue, and wonder why the hell they bothered to join a company that appeared (before the purchase of the regionals by QF) to have so much to offer, and in the end turned out to be dead end jobs. QF will never get 100% out of these employees now, but had QF decided to give them a real go (and be fair and honest about it) at a QF job, they all would have given 110%

The discrimination issue has been thought about alot but 2 things (at least) are stopping a court case:
1) Money! The AFAP spent big bucks on the integration case and don't want to spend any more, and
2) What brave court is going to tell the "safest" airline in the world how recruit its employees?

That's my 20 cents worth I think.