Qantas chief executive Vanessa Hudson is nothing if not a chip off the old block. Contrary to her calming words on her coronation, it’s clear she is spoiling for a fight on a number of fronts: with customers, staff and unions.
Rather than trying to show that the Alan Joyce era is behind the airline by working with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) on a settlement, it lodged its defence in the Federal Court this week to the damaging probe by the competition regulator.
In fighting the charges, the airline is seeking to justify its actions. Just when Hudson should have read the room and settled, she instead signalled a long legal fight that will have lawyers rubbing their hands. Tying itself in knots trying to account for an inadequate and antiquated booking platform and management attitudes, the submission is a serious error of judgment, serving only to further damage its tattered brand while handing critics years of ammunition — particularly about flights really being a “bundle of services”.
Yesterday Qantas faced a Senate inquiry into the industrial relations closing loopholes bill that could torpedo the airline’s model of dividing and conquering its staff by creating myriad companies with different pay rates. It claimed that to stay afloat, it needed to pay staff (not management, of course) less — and admitted it had negotiated 43 separate pay deals in the past two and a half years.
It appears Hudson is determined to plough on with Joyce’s strategy and that of the board, which will face shareholders at the AGM on Friday. So much for Hudson saying she could count on the help of employees to show customers “why we deserve to be their trusted first choice”.
Pilots, engineers and white-collar staff who spoke to Crikey all said morale remained extremely low and Hudson had not moved the dial.
Indeed, she and her industrial relations team refuse to budge on giving a better deal to pilots at Qantas’ regional airline subsidiary Network Aviation, who are paid only 60% of the wages of mainline pilots, despite flying the same planes. A two-day strike this week has been pulled “in good faith” by the union after the two sides were ordered into mediation for four days next week by the Fair Work Commission (FWC).
It’s an early test of new rules brought in by the Albanese government and will be a closely watched battle, one the union has told its members in documents seen by Crikey to expect to be “long and hard”.
To counter an industrial action, Qantas has sacrificed regular Melbourne-to-Canberra flights, inconveniencing its customers in the east and to cover strike action with a Boeing 717. It also showed it was prepared to sacrifice other routes, such as Adelaide-Perth, flights that were cancelled today to bring in more aircraft in preparation for the strike.
“Unfortunately it’s too late to unwind these plans,” Network Aviation COO Trevor Worgan said in a staff note yesterday.
A pilot familiar with the FWC talks said: “Qantas keeps crying poor but has no financial statements to provide. We have already replaced Qantas on the Perth-to-Darwin route and many Western Australian passenger routes, so where has the money gone? There seems to be plenty of money to pay executives millions.
“Network HQ is in crisis meeting after crisis meeting and Worgan was called over to Sydney last Friday for a meeting with Hudson and there are growing concerns amongst pilots about safety.”
In the meantime, Hudson has raised fares across the group board by 3-3.5% — a bid to contend with, she claims, rising fuel costs, as well as to presumably try to lock in its monopolistic profits ($2.47 billion last financial year).
But there are signs the continuing industrial relations hardball may be counterproductive, as miners who rely on Network Aviation are rumoured to be exploring other options with Perth-based Alliance, a company similar to Network Aviation. It was the subject of a takeover bid by Qantas but was rejected by the ACCC and dropped by Hudson two weeks ago.
Into this mix comes newly appointed QantasLink CEO Rachel Yangoyan — yet another member of Hudson’s team with minimal operational experience — who is responsible for Network Aviation and other regional subsidiaries. She’s an accountant who worked her way up in the company for 20 years through its loyalty division.
Some of the comments on her welcome note to staff, signed simply “Rachel”, had staff eyes rolling: “Outside of work I like to spend time with my family (including my five-year-old spoodle who definitely loves me the most), attempt to stay fit and love cooking and travel.”
Stay tuned.
Is Qantas charting new territory under Vanessa Hudson, or circling the same old tarmac? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
It would be useful to know what the financial bottom line was in 1993 before the Australian government began to flog off Qantas. If it was in the red, by what amount were taxpayers subsidising a well reputed airline with an outstanding safety record & proud staff?
If Qantas is so close to not being a viably operating airline (as Hudson claims) why would senior management continue to bleed the bottom line by maintaining their inflated salaries & bonuses?
I love it when people who advocate privatization complain that airlines like Qantas, which we used to own, have to compete against publicly owned airlines from other countries that offer much better service. Apart from paying for CEOs to acquire huge harborside mansions and richly remunerating the board members, explain the benefits of privatization to us again?
As a frequent flyer and member of Qantas, the thought of Alan Joyce’s and Goyder’s understudy taking the reins has left me coldly furious.
From luggage (work clothes) left on the tarmac in Perth whilst we were in Kalgoorlie to the cancellations which means we travel a day early and leave a day later, to the “$50 for the extra bag so that I don’t have to life more than 15kg” to the pathetic offer of $50 when the $200 worth of extra bags didn’t make it Kalgoorlie for 4 days.
What about carrying your own wipes so that you can use the tray tables and then finding 2cm long lichen growing in the toilet, on the wall behind the door? We were breathing that stuff and more.
Back in 1993 we had a national airline with an unimpeachable reputation, which meant that, if we needed to evacuate our citizens we had an airline to do it. Look at the mess with border closures and Covid, yes the neo-liberalism approach! has worked a treat for us all, hasn’t it?
I could go on and on!
The problem we now have is that the children of neo-liberalism are starting to take charge and really don’t understand that once upon a time, the airports were clean and functional and planes didn’t just not turn up.
Hudson had only a relatively short window of time to demonstrate that despite being Joyce’s right hand for many years, she had the wit and the insight to distance herself from his toxic legacy. It is now clear that that is not going to happen, so it is hard to see how she will have any credibility with staff or the travelling public from here on. That means she should probably take the golden parachute and jump sooner rather than later. And the entire sociopathically anti-worker board need to go as well.
Circling the same old tarmac? Circling the drain, more like
The Spirit of Australia: price gouge your customers while expressing concern about having to raise prices and substantially increasing board salaries; antagonise your employees, indeed sack and replace them if you can get away with it; manipulate terminal slots by cancelling 8,000 flights to keep competitors at bay; justify cancelled flights with a cute legalese argument that your customers don’t pay for a seat they book, they only book a “service”; risk passenger safety with ancient aircraft and questionable overseas maintenance contracts; attempt to bank unused flight credits to profit; take billions in pandemic aid under “Jobkeeper” then sack your workers; force customers to pay extra for higher category seats (sorry “services”) when they try to use their credits.
The board and management are so out of touch with the real world, it’s breathtaking that they think they can continue to get away with it. If, as they claim, the company would be unviable if they had to pay equitable wages, then close this dodgy company down now.
Putting those who have worked their way up the Qantas corporate ladder as its new leadership team was never going to work. Qantas can be saved but not until it has a complete clean out of the upper echelons and replaced them with ethical people with genuine aviation knowledge. Probably too much to ask.
I have not flown with Qantas since 1988. I shall continue to not do that.