With the Qantas lockout of more than 80,000 customers without notice coming to an end this afternoon, the dispute that a 2am Fair Work Australia ruling appeared to solve is already hitting new turbulence.
The Transport Workers Union, representing the ground handling staff, said it was taking urgent legal advice as to whether it should appeal the FWA ruling.
National secretary Tony Sheldon simultaneously pledged to abide by the 21-day period (starting today) during which it can conciliate its differences with Qantas before a compulsory and binding arbitration could be made by the Fair Work umpire while having its legal team explore a ruling that he said needed to be challenged and, if possible, appealed.
His comments reflect some anger in the government, from the PM down, at the extreme action taken without due notice by Qantas to ground its domestic mainline and international fleets on Saturday until such time as the unions with which it was in dispute withdrew their legally protected industrial action.
The other unions, for the licensed engineers and the long-haul Qantas pilots, have also expressed concern that under this first major test of Julia Gillard’s Fair Work Australia laws, a company, Qantas, had attacked its customers — in its case 22,000 travellers overseas and about 80,000 within Australia — by stranding them at airports in order to force the abandonment of legal industrial action by unions with which it is in dispute by itself causing the necessary amount of harm to the national interest to trigger legal intervention.
At a press conference this morning Qantas CEO Alan Joyce made a virtue of this, saying the airline took that action, rather than directly approaching FWA, because under the rules the industrial actions of the unions was insufficient to meet the test of harming the national economy.
Before Joyce spoke, Gillard said of Qantas:
“They could have gone to the industrial umpire and sought assistance with arbitrating the dispute, working together with the industrial umpire to get it resolved. Instead they took the action, with very little notice to anyone, of grounding the planes and stranding passengers around Australia and the world.”
Just before she spoke, her industrial relations minister, Senator Chris Evans, described the Qantas actions as “extreme and provocative”.
However, Joyce seemed unperturbed by the falling out with the federal government, and soon after he started speaking about the overwhelming messages of support he had received from business and large shareholders for his “courageous” actions the Qantas share price jumped more than 6.5% in early trading on the ASX. Qantas rival and dispute beneficiary Virgin Australia saw its shares jump 5.5% in the same period.
Government ministers, starting with Transport Minister Anthony Albanese on Saturday night, have cast doubts on Joyce’s claims that the grounding decision was suddenly made on Saturday morning, but have confirmed that when it was conveyed to the government on Saturday afternoon — three hours before the groundings began and threw air travel into chaos — Joyce threatened that it would begin even sooner if word of it leaked out.
As the tales of misery continued from stranded travellers, including some who were abandoned by Qantas in flooded Bangkok when their London-Australia flight was grounded, the question as to just how much damage Qantas had inflicted on its own brand and that of Australia as a destination took on a life of its own on social media.
Joyce this morning brushed that off, saying the Qantas brand was resilient, pointing to how it had quickly recovered from a long ground engineers strike in 2008. He said the decision had been taken spontaneously by the board on Saturday morning, although there had been contingency scenario planning for months before.
While the dislocated travellers, many of whom have vowed never to fly Qantas again, resume their trips, Joyce said Qantas had been saved from a slow death by a thousand cuts.
He said the government has been warned on numerous occasions that Qantas forward bookings had collapsed because of the uncertainty generated by the industrial action, and that it was “very clear that our longer term survival was in question”.
Perhaps it still is.
Julia Gillard should have taken Alan Joyce’s phone call and terminated the industrial action immediately.
She failed the leadership test!
That’s right, John. When big corporations come a’knocking, the gubment should protect them and their interests beyond all others. Stick it to the pinko commies!
The guy from Virgin Atlantic today said on ABC News 24 that the UK situation is different, as they only have 2 unions to negotiate with: the pilots and the cabin crew. So what happens with the other staff, such as engineers and baggage handlers? Observations have also been made about the different management approach in Europe, which tends to involve employee reps much more in the actual running of the company. I don’t know how much these practices are cultural and how much they might relate to airlines in which governments have more direct involvement by virtue of ownership, but it does call into question whether some more modern and intelligent practices could serve to neutralise our highly adversarial industrial relations environment.
Well my wife and I were two of the 80,000 stranded passengers in Australia, wanting to get home for work this morning to Bendigo from Adelaide, we were there for our eldest son’s 30th birthday. We have been Qantas Club, and prior to that Flight Deck members for over 20 years and have been loyal to the brand, at least domestically (the international brand lost our business to the various sandpit carriers 7 or so years ago, Alan are you reading this: HEATHROW SUCKS UNLESS YOU ARE GOING TO LONDON). No longer.
I have to say it up front Virgin gouged us, there were no cheap seats and the 20% discount eluded us, it was not at all available on their website at 9pm Adelaide time on Saturday. We just booked and paid for our flights with the Amex card and have already submitted the claim for the refund from Qantas. I had flown Virgin the week before for business (like many I needed a guarantee I’d be there and back in a day) and was impressed, my wife hadn’t flown them for some time, she was also impressed with the service, although not with the price (but we weren’t paying so we didn’t give a sh!t). Qantas could learn a thing or two. For starters the seats have padding on them. The seat didn’t cause my slightly overample posterior to go completely numb after 30 minutes. We could request in advance the exit row by confirming we were willing and able to open the emergency exit (QF have never allowed this, just another instance of them being dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb).
The inflight service was good. The meals were complimentary (I think this was deliberate, or do they always do this on weekends?), the staff cheerful. Now QF staff get a bad rap, most are great, but we’ve all met the occasional sour puss on QF who give the lot a bad name. I’ve yet to meet a miserable DJ cabin crew member, but long term customers might be able to shed more light on this.
The Lounge. What a change from the Qantas Club. The QC is now a barn, noisy, over full and a victim of it’s own success. On my business flight I had complimentary access, it’s bright, cheery, and what the Qantas Club once was and the Koru Club still is – relatively quiet and exclusive. If Virgin are clever and offer all of us fed up QC members to waive the joining fee (and perhaps discount the first year price) I will be at the head of the queue to sign up and switch my loyalties completely.
If I ever have the misfortune to run into Alan Joyce I will endeavour to shove my QC membership card up his left nostril. Sideways. We are two long term, loyal customers he has lost, probably forever.
John,
Alan Joyce has dismissed as misinformation newspaper reports that he tried to call the PM, or would have called off the action had she returned his call. Alan Joyce has also corrected his clear but since denied statements to Fran Kelly on ABC Radio National this morning that he had on multiple occasions told government ministers that the airline could be grounded.
He has also confirmed that at no time did he raise with the government its plans for a lock out before the board’s decision was conveyed to Anthony Albanese at 2 pm on Saturday as a fair accompli.
I will deal with this side show in more detail in Crikey blog Plane Talking later today.
You can listen to Alan Joyce clearly saying things he has since categorically denied on this link.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2011/3351801.htm