TWU CALLS ON BOARD TO ENSURE POST-JOYCE QANTAS INVESTS IN WORKFORCE

The TWU has written to the Qantas board calling for an urgent meeting to discuss Joyce’s succession plan and the need to invest in the workforce in the light of $1.4 billion half-year profits before tax.

The letter calls for a meeting to discuss:

• The succession plan for a Qantas CEO including essential criteria for skills, experience and attitude towards the workforce and customers;
• The reinstatement of 1,700 skilled workers unlawfully outsourced; and
• Qantas’ responsibilities to deliver safe, secure jobs through commercial contracts with labour providers, including how Qantas and the TWU can together best implement the new rights and obligations set out in the Secure Jobs, Better Pay legislation.

TWU National Secretary Michael Kaine said the Joyce-led strategy to gut the workforce to pay people less to do the same jobs has dragged the airline through the mud, and the next CEO will face a difficult challenge to repair the damage.

“Qantas’ next CEO will inherit a decimated workforce and an airline with its reputation in tatters. It will be a difficult task to repair the damage, but it can be done if the next management team abandons the ideological attacks on the workforce and invests in skilled, experienced and highly-trained workers.

“Qantas customers can’t be bought by airport lounges, and the suggestion that this would repair the damage of total chaos and warfare on workers is frankly insulting to passengers and the public.  

“This booming profit announcement dwarfs the supposed $100 million Qantas claimed it would save from 1700 illegal sackings of workers who’d given decades of their lives to the airline. That fraction of a cost saving in comparison to ballooning profits and exorbitant bonus schemes was only possible by paying people less to do the same work, causing tremendous pain to hundreds of Qantas families, to the business, and to good, secure jobs across the aviation industry.

“The Spirit of Australia was built over a century by those getting planes off the ground and safely into the air. The only way to return Qantas to the once-cherished national icon it was is by bringing back those workers and the fair pay and conditions they had negotiated for decades before Joyce’s rein.

“That would be in the interests of workers, passengers and the community, rather than executive bonuses, which means the current Joyce-led management team will not even consider it. That’s why we need the board to meet with worker representatives to establish the key criteria for a targeted and effective succession plan.

“In addition, we need the Federal Government to establish a Safe and Secure Skies Commission to set and enforce fair standards throughout aviation so the Australian public can once again rely on this essential industry,” he said.

Click here for the letter