Merged: QANTAS/ALAEA EBA

[cpiom]

That is apparently what you pay your union for!!
Hmm no new ideas there.

[mel applied]

cpiom

thanks for bugger all. you can highlight problems, but no solutions.
Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.

[cpiom]

mel applied, for once we agree. If one side does not back down or change their tact there is no solution. When I say one side I mean either side, I see good and bad in both and both NEED to co-exist, contra to what others are posting.

[Sunfish]

Hmmmm, we have had all the trolls here in the last twelve hours blathering on, QF must be starting to hurt.

By the way, I saw this advertisement in yesterday's paper:

ADVERTISEMENT

QANTAS REQUIRES STAFF IN ALL DEPARTMENTS

Qantas Airlines, Australia's national airline, has vacancies for staff in all departments, suitably qualified persons are invited to apply.

Qantas offers world class conditions of employment and remuneration, but unfortunately for you, only to executives. As a Qantas employee, your conditions of employment are what we say they are from day to day. The only constants being that we will do everything possible to maintain you in a state of total Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt regarding your future employment with the company. We like it like that, it makes us feel good.

We hope you that after you join Qantas, and before you find out what a rotten company we are, you will decide to make long term plans, buy a house, marry, and start a family, that way your ordinary commitments will make you pathetically dependent on continuing employment with the company. That way we can control you much better.

Of course, as you age and gain Qantas specific skills that are of little use outside Australia's sole international airline, your dependency increases since it becomes harder and harder to change jobs. This allows us to really screw you more and more as you get older.

Some of you may believe that you you will progress into senior positions or perhaps even management, thus avoiding the pressures that we put our staff under. Don't bet on it. To be promoted will require that you demonstrate to senior management that you have developed the morals and ethics of an alley cat, and at the least this will require that you show us your ability to lie convincingly and with a straight face. Very few Qantas staff, especially those who work with customers (the mugs who buy our tickets) or in responsible safety critical jobs, seem to have this ability. We still don't understand why.

In any case, we are sceptical of anyone getting into Qantas management with actual hands - on experience of aviation because you would threaten the rest of us. What we have designed instead to keep you happy is an endless progression of different grades and qualifications that you can aspire to reach, but of course don't expect increased respect or authority when you achieve any of them. You can, of course, expect vastly increased responsibility as you progress, and why you would want this is to us still a mystery.

This of course leads us to the subject of remuneration. We have carefully designed this system to look highly attractive to beginners with the company in the fond hope that by the time you learn the truth you will already be "locked in" and dependent, the Americans call this technique "Bait and switch", but at Qantas we like to think that we perfected it first.

Your salary will initially rise as you gain the basic qualifications to serve the idiots who fly with us or keep the aircraft flying. However you can expect that by middle age your salary will actually be declining in inflation adjusted terms and it will continue to do so until we terminate you, or you resign, or you bizarrely decide to remain with us until your retirement.

Don't believe our claims about reaching salaries of $130,000 plus. We keep one or two people on those figures just to prove to the rest of you morons that it isn't a mirage, but of course we aren't stupid enough to pay all of you like that are we?

We still don't understand why you accept our remuneration policy all the time. True, we do our best to scare you into accepting it, and it seems to work. We also don't understand why you are happy to see your living standards slip behind the rest of the community, some of our employees talk about "loyalty to the Company" we don't do loyalty, and our salaries and bonuses had better keep climbing every year or else.

So please come and work for us, we need more people to suck the life out of, and when we are finished with you we will throw you on the scrap heap without a second thought. Apply today.

[Socket]

CPIOM,

Quote,
Bolty if all you can do is attack somebody's opinion rather than give consructive comments, I would suggest a deeper seated emotional problem.

I have noticed a common theme though, you all speak about family time and how great it is to spend time with family and how the union PIA is helping you do that. Great, nothing better than family, more time and money spent on family the better. Maybe the question should be asked of your FedSec about spending time and child support on his kids and ex wife, or is this PIA about his political career. Once a LAME always a LAME, it's all about us.
We are all keen to put bread on the table and support our families, what is the true intention of the ALAEA?

PS. I am a LAME but would never take directions from a union exec full of hypocrites. At least QF pay my wage.

Piss off you idiot.

What is constructive about this crap.

All I see is a VERY personal attack on the FedSec.

If you are a LAME as you say I pity anyone having to work with you if your diagnostic/troubleshooting ability is anything like your debating skills.

You obviously have serious personal issues with the ALAEA and/or Steve so why not just start your own thread on that and leave this one to the rest of us.

What a wker.

[division1]

At the risk of feeding the trolls, and way too much time on my hands now
cpiom..."If you have no adequate come back for what somebody has said you ignore them,
if they don't agree with your view you defame them."
cpiom..."with your denegration of anybody who would dare question your motives and actions."
cpiom..."So call me a troll or management at lest I am willing to take a level headed approach
to the situation and not resort to childish name calling!!!"
cpiom..."A VILE SLANDEROUS PERSONAL ATTACK ON A KNOWN PUBLIC INDIVIDUAL."
YOU SIR HAVE OVERSTEPPED THE MARK,
I WISH YOU WOULD RETRACT THAT DIATRIBE,
cpiom..."a union exec full of hypocrites"
AND/OR GO DIE SOMEWHERE.

[pablo m]

Why we are really fighting for the EBA

I am a 32 year veteran at Base Servicing (ACS) in Syd. I am ok with my pay. I am NOT OK with the lack of recognition, respect, training that the younger members of all the various LAME areas are getting, and that without a fair wage increase we will continue losing AME's and LAMEs and will not be able to attract and hold new apprentices and engineers.
I am most definitely not happy that I am daily faced with no engineers unable to tow an a/c, get into a fuel tank, unable to certify for a/c we have had for decades (LE), no training on basic equipment, lead LAMEs stretched to the absolute limit each and every shift due to insuffiient licence training (A330), and an organisation unbelievably dependent upon continual overtime, creating fatigue risks.
If my managers read this, you are setting us up to fail. You won't realise what you had until it is too late.
I challenge you DC, MH, RH, Km etc, to come down onto the hangar floors and talk with your people.

[Clipped]

Sunny,

That was hilarious and sad, because of it's tragic truth.

[PTTSwitch]

Does anyone know what happened to the A chk supposed to be happening in LAX?

[The masked goatrider]

The A check will be fine. A new Young manager went up there who will be signing all the defects and checks out even the mechanical ones. Qantas have made him an approved person to do anything he likes, CASA have endorsed that position and Murray said it was ok to work completely outside the procedures. So she'll be right.

[YOSHI]

Interesting to see the Trolls are getting nasty!

Good to see the ALAEA members are united, and that their unity is getting stronger every day.

All we need to do is to continue to follow the PPM, LAP's, MERB's, Take 5, SAFE, and of course the AMM Procedures. By doing this and declining to do O/T on our rostered days off, the mess that our esteemed managers have created will soon be uncovered.

There is no need to take any further action, as this will play into the hands of GD and his 'Team'. Just have patience, time is on our side.

This EBA is not just about the 5%, it is about more than that. It is about the future of safe air travel in this country.

Pablo M summed it up well, Without a reasonable wage increase, and real carreer prospects for newcommers to this industry, there is no future for aviation maintainance in Australia. This is an unacceptable situation.

GD and his team are only about money.

The ALAEA members are about much more than that.

[sickofqf]

The A check will be fine. A new Young manager went up there who will be signing all the defects and checks out even the mechanical ones. Qantas have made him an approved person to do anything he likes, CASA have endorsed that position and Murray said it was ok to work completely outside the procedures. So she'll be right.

If CY does indeed step so much as one toe outside the PPM then I would hope the ALAEA has made sure that the other boys in LAX have sufficient supplies of Form2000s and CROSS reports.....not to mention access to a non-QF fax!!

I don't think there'll be much to worry about though, CY was a useless pile of dung as a LAME and spent so much time 'networking', after he converted to Kevyanity, after his long career of being a jackass that he has VERY LITTLE hands on experience.

Beside, the 'A' checks can only happen if the aircraft goes there.....resched time boys...lets make REALLY sure those 400's are 100% serviceable.
By the way.....CPIOM reported to mods for personal attack on SP

[Bolty McBolt]

Bolty if all you can do is attack somebody's opinion rather than give consructive comments, I would suggest a deeper seated emotional problem.

I have noticed a common theme though, you all speak about family time and how great it is to spend time with family and how the union PIA is helping you do that. Great, nothing better than family, more time and money spent on family the better. Maybe the question should be asked of your FedSec about spending time and child support on his kids and ex wife, or is this PIA about his political career. Once a LAME always a LAME, it's all about us.
We are all keen to put bread on the table and support our families, what is the true intention of the ALAEA?

consructive = constructive

Interesting to see the Trolls are getting nasty!


I think Cpiom has mistaken me for someone else.
I have never mentioned family , and I did not attack your opinion.
I fact I said I respected it.
I posted my opinion on the theme of your posts and my take on your argument. (page 115 post 2287)
Never did I attack you in any way or have to resort to childish name calling, that looks like your department.

cpiom

If one side does not back down or change their tact there is no solution. When I say one side I mean either side, I see good and bad in both and both NEED to co-exist, contra to what others are posting.

Good point, My post described exactly why I don't think it should be the LAMEs

[Mr Invisible]

I'm a little out of depth with the forensics of running a company the size of Qantas that's why I fix aircraft and that I do exceptionally well.

My brothers, sisters and I have created and maintained the safety record that is QANTAS.

It is time WE get recognized, respected and paid iaw with that effort.

WE will no longer live on our knees, this time WE stand on our own two feet.

GD is simply a dictator and in 2009 he will be retiring to Zimbabwe that is if Robert can keep the door open for him.

[Konehead]

PAF, I read one of your posts, which I can't seem to find now, stating that you posted here to debate the issues.

You’re not a debater. You’re a bomb-chucker, an agent provocateur.

When you toss the grenade that we shouldn’t go to industrial action to get what we want, you refuse to debate the point that we’ve been negotiating for almost 20 months. Should we continue negotiating forever? You offer no alternatives but silence.

When you toss the grenade that our industrial action hurts innocent people, it has been pointed out to you that:

• the innocent families of LAMEs whose pay in real terms is going backwards at a time of rapidly rising housing, fuel and living costs are hurting too.
• we did all we could to avoid the industrial action. We also kept the public as fully informed as our resources allowed (flyers handed to customers explaining the issues – which I can provide to you in your guise as a member of the flying public, just so you’re more fully informed of the issues you claim to debate yet do so without all the facts).
• When we offered an alternative to a 4 hour stop work meeting, the company refused and forced us into it.
• Qantas Engineering is so under-staffed, under-resourced and over-regulated with nonsensical, unworkable and impractical policies and procedures written by the current management regime. A company should not rely on the goodwill of its employees (i.e. working overtime and finding policy & procedure work-arounds to get the job done) to such an extent that when that goodwill is removed through the actions and inactions of its management, it will be crippled by it’s employees doing the bare minimum they’re contracted to do, within the policies and procedures written by the management.

But the debate ends there. Where’s PAF? Gone AWOL.

When you tossed the grenade that we shouldn’t need a 4 hour stop work meeting (or a 1 hour paid info meeting with skeleton staff to keep the operation running), you refuse to debate the validity of a broadcast monologue by email vs. a dialogue between the union members and their elected representatives. Again, what was your alternative? And what was your response? Silence.

When you tossed the grenade that “if we don’t like it, then leave”, you refuse to acknowledge the following:

• many QF staff don’t want to “just leave”. Many QF staff, and in particular LAMEs, are long serving staff. The company’s institutions (which pre-date the current management regime) actually encourage long service, such as long service leave, accumulating sick leave and superannuation benefit multiples that grow with time.
• long serving staff have seen good and bad management go. The current crop falls into the latter category. They have done untold harm to a highly respected and capable institution and broken promises to its staff. We want to see the back of them, because we’re proud of what Qantas has been to us over decades of service, and we’re bitterly disappointed and ashamed of what this great company has become.

When you tossed the grenade that we weren’t worthy of the payrise we were asking for, I for one made the case, along with others, that we were. Allow me to reiterate:
Quote:
1. 1999 - 2008: total pay-rises for LAMEs = 17% over 10 years, or 1.7% per annum. Community standard? 37% CPI? 34% GD? 251% in 5 years, or 50% per annum.
2. A 25% drop in LAME numbers vs. a 25% increase in fleet size in the last few years. And until recently, the vast majority of aircraft were getting out on time. That equates to a massive increase in efficiency per LAME by anyone's reckoning, despite an ageing fleet requiring relatively more maintenance.
3. We were promised to be "looked after when times are good" in return for a 30 month pay freeze. Three years of record profits under their belts, and we've been "negotiating" with them for nearly 2 of those three years to get what we were promised.
4. A top tier AME is paid more than a first-licence LAME. "Here's a licence son, take on all the responsibilities of a signatory, supervise those AMEs - oh and now give me back $X bucks a week!" HELLO!
5. A QF LAME has to work for over 30 years to receive what a 1st year LAME receives at VB or J*.

6. QF revenue growth has been more than double that of wages over the last three years, despite the rapid rise in fuel costs in the same period. That equates to a Group-wide improvement in employee efficiency, or "the ability to generate revenue per man-hour".
7. "Independent financial analysts (Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Macquarie) conservatively project that QF revenue will continue to grow at an average of approximately 7% per annum over the next three years". Therefore, a 5% payrise over the next 3 years is affordable.
8. QF earned more revenue per employee than the domestic airline sector average: $443,000 vs. $436,000.
9. A 5% wage claim wil cost $360 million IF it flows to the rest of the company's employees. Fat chance of that happening. All staff may deserve it, but few have our leverage. And so what if it did flow through? The company can't afford 0.52% of revenue to help sustain that revenue, rather than piss people off and guarantee that revenue will fall more than that from a disengaged, un-inspired, under-performing workforce?
10. QF has increased international fares by 33% in the last 9 months, so fuel costs are being largely passed onto the customer, not eroding the bottom line, and not removing QF's ability to give us a fair pay-rise.

On a related note, you have a tendency to hone in on a particular sentence, phrase or even a word and quibble over a point based on that, rather than holistically looking at a post in its entirety and responding to the sentiment of the post as a whole.

For example, you criticise my maths – a failure to take into account compounding. Well-spotted. I stand corrected. But figure this out maths genius:
1. GD? 251% in 5 years = what per annum exactly?
2. A 25% drop in LAME numbers vs. a 25% increase in fleet size in the last few years = what productivity/efficiency increase? Assume since 2001.

Your bomb-chucking and provocation is NOT debate. Don’t pretend otherwise.

[Konehead]

cpiom

PS. I am a LAME but would never take directions from a union exec full of hypocrites. At least QF pay my wage.

So when OUR union secures a payrise higher than the standard 3%, will you give back the difference to the company or take what OUR union and members fought for?

[beachhead]

CY spotted around SYD Base today. Better get your facts straight before throwing stones gents.

[shotpeen]

just found out 48 bodys attending Aviation Aust. in BNE for AA training next week.
anyone have any more info?

[Flugbegleiter]

Originally Posted by Konehead

So when OUR union secures a payrise higher than the standard 3%, will you give back the difference to the company or take what OUR union and members fought for?

Since it is effectively the union that negotiates the pay increases (and by union, I mean all financial members of the union, along with the delegates, etc), I think it would be only fair to charge non-union members a fee to sign-on to a new EBA. Why should you all have to pay hundreds of dollars each year in union fees but they pay nothing, yet get the same results? An EBA negotiating fee would be fair for those people. Especially when it has taken industrial action to get the results!

[Sunfish]

Great first post shotpeen, what do you mean by AA training?