Qantas Profits Crash

• General News
• 26th June 2012

As Qantas employees hang out for their long awaited pay rise to be decided by the courts the firm's CEO Alan Joyce appears to be steering the iconic airline on a downward crash spiral.

Joyce recently announced that the airline's profits were expected to slump by a massive 90% this year.

The firm's shares slumped by 19% immediately after the release of the bad news wiping $600 million off the value of the company.

All rather ironic, don't you think, considering Joyce pocketed a cool 71% pay rise last year just before he locked out our members, grounded the airline and completely pissed off thousands of passengers.

TWU national secretary Tony Sheldon summed up the situation rather well I thought in an ABC interview soon after the profits crash become public.

"We've seen the workforce have its work conditions slashed. A workforce that's made the airline so safe and such an iconic brand throughout the world" said Tony.

"And there's only one thing that's improved - not the shareholder value, that's gone down 19% in the last 24 hours; over 75% in the last five years."

The only thing that seems to be going up is the executive pays and the number of executives they employ within the top echelon of Qantas."

Spot on Tony, everyone's a loser except the bungling Joyce and his high paid honchos.

There's also the Fair Work Ombudsmen decision to prosecute Qantas' cheap flights alternative, Jetstar, for crewing domestic flights with Asian flight attendants.

Cabin crew are allegedly being recruited in Thailand and are working on domestic routes at far cheaper rates of pay than Australian staff.

Some are apparently being paid as little as $400 a month - That's right - $400 PER MONTH.

The Ombudsman claims the Thai crews are owed thousands of back pay and is taking Jetstar to court to get it.

The Ombudsman will also ask the court to ban Jetstar's use of overseas workers at lower than Australian rates of pay and conditions.

And the airlines move to a cheaper workforce doesn't stop at Jetstar.

The company made an extra-ordinary admission at the Qantas pay and conditions hearing when they stated they would no longer be employing ground staff directly.

All future employees will be engaged through Qantas Ground Services, which is really a kind of in-house cheap labour hire unit set up within the company.

And of course the wages and conditions of the QGS employees are significantly inferior to the directly employed ground staff.

As The Wheel went to press a meeting of all Qantas members was being held at the airport to update them on the latest from Qantas.

The culture amongst Alan Joyce and his top managers is seriously out of kilter with Australian values of a fair go and common decency.

This must change otherwise all that will be left of this Australian icon is a logo and a frequent flyer program.