Qantas has grounded its entire domestic and international fleets indefinitely and announced the lockout of all employees covered by the agreements that are currently in dispute.
Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said the groundings would take place immediately and the lockout will begin at 8pm AEDT on Monday.
"We are locking out until the unions withdraw their extreme claim and reach agreement with us," Mr Joyce told a press conference on Saturday.
Mr Joyce said his hand had been tipped by the impossible demands of the three unions.
"They are trashing our strategy and our brand," he said.
"They are deliberately destabilising the company and there is no end in sight."
If the industrial action continued, Qantas would have no choice but to shut down its business "part by part", the chief executive said.
He believed the lockout and grounding of the fleet was the only effective avenue at his disposal to bring about a solution to the dispute.
Mr Joyce said he was sorry the course of action had become necessary but the ball was now in the unions' court.
"They must decide just how badly they want to hurt Qantas, their members ... and the travelling public," he said.
The airline will offer hotel accommodation and alternative flights to those who are mid-journey and can't get home when the grounding takes effect.
And there will be refunds and ticket transfers available to passengers whose flights are cancelled.
Qantas said it would keep passengers updated on the situation via its website, Facebook page and Twitter.
The airline said at 5pm (AEDT) on Saturday there were 64 aircraft in the air, 36 domestic and 28 international carrying more than 7000 passengers.
These aircraft will complete the sectors in which they are operating and will then be grounded.
In total 108 aircraft will be grounded in 22 airports around the world.
The airline says, 13,305 passengers are booked to travel on Qantas planes from overseas ports to Australia in the next 24 hours.
About 1310 international passengers may be at international airports now waiting for their flight to depart.
Qantas will stop all domestic and international flights from 5pm (AEDT) on Saturday 29 October until further notice. This is in response to the damaging industrial action by three unions - the Australian Licenced Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA), the Australian International Pilots Association (AIPA) and the Transport Workers Union (TWU).
QantasLink, Jetstar, Jetconnect services, and our freight services (Express Freighters Australia and Atlas) will continue to operate as normal.
Qantas is providing a full refund for any flights cancelled due to the industrial action. Customers can also rebook their flights for a later date.
Customers are advised not to travel to the airport unless they are travelling on a QantasLink , Jetstar or Jet Connect flight and are urged to reconsider any non-urgent travel and defer their travel plans wherever possible.
Due to the significant nature of this disruption and the uncertainty as to how long the grounding will last, we are only able to manage customer bookings on a day-by-day basis.
Only customers travelling within the next 24 hours should call our Contact Centres on 13 13 13 to discuss their alternatives.
If you are travelling in the next few days/weeks, please monitor the situation on qantas.com. We recommend that you do not change your booking until closer to the date of departure.
We understand that this will have a significant impact on our customers and apologise for the inconvenience that the damaging union action has caused. We thank you for your understanding and continued support.
Customer Support for customers flying on Saturday 29 October 2011
Domestic customers:
If you are away from home and between flights today, Qantas will arrange accommodation, meals and transfers for you.
If you are away from home and beginning your journey today, unfortunately you will need to source your own accommodation we will reimburse you for reasonable out of pocket expenses including accommodation, transfers, meals and incidentals up to a total value of AUD 350 per person per day. A limit of AUD 250 per night for accommodation and AUD 100 for incidentals (meals and phone calls) per person per day applies.
International customers
Qantas will arrange accommodation, meals and transfers for you.
Full details of how to claim your reimbursement, including an online claim form are available on www.qantas.com. Please ensure you keep all receipts in order to make your claim..
This is the blueprint for anybody at Air Canada willing to accept reduced working conditions at their proposed LCC. Air Canada will shift more and more flying to the LCC portion of the business citing "economic necessity" until it's all there and the original contract becomes a minor footnote. For those who don't think Air Canada would be so underhanded ask yourself how they are blatantly violating the current contract with impunity?
Rockie wrote:This is the blueprint for anybody at Air Canada willing to accept reduced working conditions at their proposed LCC. Air Canada will shift more and more flying to the LCC portion of the business citing "economic necessity" until it's all there and the original contract becomes a minor footnote. For those who don't think Air Canada would be so underhanded ask yourself how they are blatantly violating the current contract with impunity?
SkyRegional anyone?
It is clear as daylight man and I wouldn't be surprised if AC tries to pull off this sh*t with their own employees, using the same excuse that they are 'fed up with unfair negotiations' as we still have Pilots, Ramp, Dispatchers and Mechanics I believe to negotiate their fair deal.
Double Wasp wrote:QantasLink, Jetstar, Jetconnect services, and our freight services (Express Freighters Australia and Atlas) will continue to operate as normal.
No kidding, that's why they chopped up Qantas in the first place...so that other branches can support the operation if something like this happens. Example here: Jazz, Skyregional, Tier 3 (Georgian, CMA, Bearskin, EVAS) ...and all we need is a long haul LCC, and then we are set to go!
Except for one minor detail, I don't believe the pilots at the quantas subsidiaries are quantas pilots(same list), so if the AC LCC were to start up and have a seperate list and not covered under the same contract, then worry. For now, I'd worry that with a conversion course Jazz could operate 767's(poke the bear, poke the bear)
If the employee groups don't give in to the LCC and CR starts the LCC anyway, exhibit A Sky Regional, then there is a very strong argument for this particular situation to unfold at AC.
I had no idea Buzz Hargrove had moved to Australia.
Before spouting brainless and totally uninformed commentary you should read up on Qantas/Jetstar, because closing down the original Qantas mainline carrier was likely their CEO's intent all along when he created Jetstar and offshored more and more of the airline. If you think people fighting for their jobs is unreasonable you've never had to fight for yours.
Air Canada's "best and brightest" is flagrantly copying Qantas without even bothering to change the script, and only a complete moron would take management's claims of limited scope as anything but a bad lie.
Alan Joyce and his ilk... I have no words to aptly describe how I feel about him.
This embarrassment of a human being gave himself a 71% pay rise just yesterday, from $AUS 3 million to 5 million, while he continues to complain that Qantas labour costs are too high. There needs to be some accountability for his actions.
SHAREHOLDERS at Qantas's AGM have today loudly booed the decision to approve a $2 million bonus to the airline's boss, Alan Joyce.
More than 97 per cent of shareholders voted in favour of the move, despite the announcement meeting widespread cat calls and derision from the majority of those who attended the meeting held at the University of New South Wales.
Angry union members are protesting against the airline during its shareholder meeting - as thousands of passengers are stranded at airports around the country withtoday's strike action.
The head of the Licenced Aircraft Engineers' Association has spoken out against Mr Joyce at the meeting.
Steve Purvinas, Secretary of the association, accused Mr Joyce of using his position to increase his own pay, while the unions continue to fight for better conditions for their workers.
"Alan Joyce will use his own $10 million worth of shareholding to vote in favour of his own 71 per cent pay rise and I think that's absolutely disgusting," he said.
Mr Purvinas said the Qantas board was "trying to shift the best part of our airline to Asia. Which is something that I think most Australians despise".
He said he was shocked to discover on arrival at the meeting at the university of NSW that shareholders would be denied their right to show "their disgust at the 71 per cent pay rise Alan Joyce is going to award himself" with a show of hands.
Instead, Mr Purvinas said, shareholders would vote on the CEO's pay using individual hand-held voting machines.
"I think it would be very disappointing for Australians to think that someone sitting on a board is going to vote against the majority of people in the room on their own 71 per cent pay rise," he said.
"Here is a man who has got $3 million a year and he has walked into his board and said 'it's not enough. I can't live off $3 million, I need a $2 million pay rise'."
Earlier, Mr Joyce promised he wouldn't give in to union pay demands and said continued strike action was giving a free kick to the airline's competition.
Virgin's 'free kick'
As industrial action again disrupted the travel plans of hundreds of passengers, the airline's board said employee costs were hitting them hard, with the international business losing $200 million.
Mr Joyce warned shareholders pay disputes were taking focus away from the airline's real threat, Virgin.
"Virgin should be the focus, and at the moment we are giving Virgin a free kick," he said.
"We have no alternative but to reject these demands, get the unrealistic demands off the table so we can get on to the competition."
Mr Joyce said the Transport Workers Union's actions have disrupted 10,000 passengers and apologised to all the passengers who will be delayed today as a result of the strikes.
"We urge the unions to stop this, to put to the table more realistic demands and to think about the jobs they're endangering around the country," he told the Nine Network.
"We've always said we want to do anything that will stop this disruption happening to our passengers - again I apologise to those customers that have been impacted by this," he said.
Unions argued that Qantas staff are more productive than Virgin staff and have a quicker turnaround.
As the AGM got underway, baggage handlers, catering workers and ground staff walked off the job.
Union war with Qantas
Employees and Transport Worker Union representative Tony Sheldon argued "employees are not at war with the company" and have supported the company many times in the past by taking pay freezes and other cuts during tough times.
But one employee at the AGM said to Mr Joyce it is unfair to ask employees to live on $20 an hour and all they are asking for is an increase of one dollar.
Meanwhile, Mr Joyce said the airline has not asked Prime Minister Julia Gillard to intervene in the airline's industrial disputes.
"The Prime Minister and the Government have the ability to intervene, if they so wish, in national interest terms," he said.
The airline has lost $68 million due to the action so far.
"$68 million is a significant impact on the company and the costs will continue to rise," Mr Joyce said.
"In comparison, the impact on Qantas from grounding aircraft during the recent volcanic ash cloud was $49 million."
But, Mr Joyce said, agreeing to the unions' "unreasonable" demands would have a far greater cost and could risk Qantas' future.
Qantas said the number of passengers impacted by the industrial action since August, including today's planned strikes by the Transport Workers' Union (TWU), was 70,922 from 129 cancelled and 387 delayed flights.
Alan Joyce and his ilk... I have no words to aptly describe how I feel about him.
This embarrassment of a human being gave himself a 71% pay rise just yesterday, from $AUS 3 million to 5 million, while he continues to complain that Qantas labour costs are too high. There needs to be some accountability for his actions.
And therein lies the problem, asking your employees to go on a diet when the leader is stealing from your pockets What a DOG !!!
There is a difference between communism and thinking CEO's shouldn't tell their employees to take pay cuts, layoffs, and worse work rules, all while giving themselves an extra $2 million a year. I wouldn't have an issue with a CEO making a lot of money, as long as their employees aren't suffering.
Imagine that as a Pilot for some airline you had to invest 5 times your annual salary in stock. Say 500K. Then you are paid 100K a year. But your stock value drops from 500K to 100K over 10 years ... you just worked 4 years for nothing... more actually because you paid taxes on your salary.
Sounds like that is the situation of the Quantas CEO, so my guess is he is mightly pissed and ready for a fight.
Not sure how much stock the aircanada executives hold but they have see a 10 fold drop in their stock over the last 10 years or so. Probably be easy to figure out how many years of salaray they lost.
Anyway just pointing out that its not that pretty anywhere in a company that is having problems....
cgzro wrote:Imagine that as a Pilot for some airline you had to invest 5 times your annual salary in stock. Say 500K. Then you are paid 100K a year. But your stock value drops from 500K to 100K over 10 years ... you just worked 4 years for nothing... more actually because you paid taxes on your salary.
Sounds like that is the situation of the Quantas CEO, so my guess is he is mightly pissed and ready for a fight.
Not sure how much stock the aircanada executives hold but they have see a 10 fold drop in their stock over the last 10 years or so. Probably be easy to figure out how many years of salaray they lost.
Anyway just pointing out that its not that pretty anywhere in a company that is having problems....
The average senior excutive compensation at Air Canada has Risen 227 % in the last 5 years. The share holders, many of whom are regular Air Canada employees got screwed but the execs did just fine..............
cgzro wrote:Imagine that as a Pilot for some airline you had to invest 5 times your annual salary in stock. Say 500K. Then you are paid 100K a year. But your stock value drops from 500K to 100K over 10 years ... you just worked 4 years for nothing... more actually because you paid taxes on your salary.
Sounds like that is the situation of the Quantas CEO, so my guess is he is mightly pissed and ready for a fight.
Not sure how much stock the aircanada executives hold but they have see a 10 fold drop in their stock over the last 10 years or so. Probably be easy to figure out how many years of salaray they lost.
Anyway just pointing out that its not that pretty anywhere in a company that is having problems....
Well I'm so glad you explained that. That totally justifies moving the entire company of Qantas offshore, shutting down the AUSTRALIAN company and putting all those AUSTRALIAN employees who had the audacity to try and protect their jobs out of work.
I suppose under the present economic circumstances giving up our job is the least we can do for Calin's modest retirement plans as well.
I may be wrong, but I firmly believe I'm witnessing morality (read greed) at it's 'highest' peak in our society! It just keeps getting better and better!
Update: Qantas ordered to resume flights by tribunal ruling
Oct. 31, 2011
This speech from Australian senator about what the management of Qantas is really doing.
It's a bit of a read but informative.
Subject: Fwd: Fw: QANTAS- Finally the truth is coming out!
This confirms what others have been saying for a while about how Qantas is subsidising Jetstar to its own detriment and to circumvent the Qantas Sale Act.
For those who haven't seen it, Senator Xenophon's speech of 23rd Aug is reproduced below.
Senator XENOPHON (South Australia) (19:37): I rise to speak tonight on an issue that is close to the hearts of many Australians, and that is the future of our national carrier, Qantas. At 90, Qantas is the world's oldest continuously running airline. It is an iconic Australian company. Its story is woven into the story of Australia and Australians have long taken pride in the service and safety standards provided by our national carrier. Who didn't feel a little proud when Dustin Hoffman uttered the immortal line in Rain Man, 'Qantas never crashed'?
While it is true that Qantas never crashes, the sad reality is that Qantas is being deliberately trashed by management in the pursuit of short-term profits and at the expense of its workers and passengers. For a long time, Qantas management has been pushing the line that Qantas international is losing money and that Jetstar is profitable. Tonight, it is imperative to expose those claims for the misinformation they are. The reality is that Qantas has long been used to subsidise Jetstar in order to make Jetstar look profitable and Qantas look like a burden. In a moment, I will provide detailed allegations of cost-shifting that I have sourced from within the Qantas Group, and when you know the facts you quickly see a pattern. When there is a cost to be paid, Qantas pays it, and when there is a profit to be made, Jetstar makes it.
But first we need to ask ourselves: why? Why would management want Qantas to look unprofitable? Why would they want to hide the cost of a competing brand within their group, namely Jetstar, in amongst the costs faced by Qantas?
To understand that, you need to go back to the days when Qantas was being privatised. When Qantas was privatised the Qantas Sale Act 1992 imposed a number of conditions, which in turn created a number of problems for any management group that wanted to flog off parts of the business. Basically, Qantas has to maintain its principal place of operations here in Australia, but that does not stop management selling any subsidiaries, which brings us to Jetstar.
Qantas has systematically built up the low-cost carrier at the expense of the parent company. I have been provided with a significant number of examples where costs which should have been billed back to Jetstar have in fact been paid for by Qantas. These are practices that I believe Qantas and Jetstar management need to explain. For example, when Jetstar took over the Cairns-Darwin-Singapore route, replacing Qantas flights, a deal was struck that required Qantas to provide Jetstar with $6 million a year in revenue. Why? Why would one part of the business give up a profitable route like that and then be asked to pay for the privilege? Then there are other subsidies when it comes to freight. On every sector Jetstar operates an A330, Qantas pays $6,200 to $6,400 for freight space regardless of actual uplift. When you do the calculations, this turns out to be a small fortune. Based on 82 departures a week, that is nearly half-a-million dollars a week or $25½ million a year.
Then there are the arrangements within the airport gates. In Melbourne, for example, my information from inside the Qantas group is that Jetstar does not pay for any gates, but instead Qantas domestic is charged for the gates. My question for Qantas management is simple: are these arrangements replicated right around Australia and why is Qantas paying Jetstar's bills? Why does Qantas lease five check-in counters at Sydney Terminal 2, only to let Jetstar use one for free? It has been reported to me that there are other areas where Jetstar's costs magically become Qantas's costs. For example, Jetstar does not have a treasury department and has only one person in government affairs. I am told Qantas's legal department also does free work for Jetstar.
Then there is the area of disruption handling where flights are cancelled and people need to be rebooked. Here, insiders tell me, Qantas handles all re-bookings and the traffic is all one way. It is extremely rare for a Qantas passenger to be rebooked on a Jetstar flight, but Jetstar passengers are regularly rebooked onto Qantas flights. I am informed that Jetstar never pays Qantas for the cost of those rebooked passengers and yet Jetstar gets to keep the revenue from the original bookings. This, I am told, is worth millions of dollars every year. So Jetstar gets the profit while Qantas bears the costs of carriage. It has also been reported to me that when Qantas provides an aircraft to Jetstar to cover an unserviceable plane, Jetstar does not pay for the use of this plane.
Yet another example relates to the Qantas Club. Jetstar passengers can and do use the Qantas Club but Jetstar does not pay for the cost of any of this. So is Qantas really losing money? Or is it profitable but simply losing money on paper because it is carrying so many costs incurred by Jetstar? We have been told by Qantas management that the changes that will effectively gut Qantas are necessary because Qantas international is losing money but, given the inside information I have just detailed, I would argue those claims need to be reassessed.
Indeed, given these extensive allegations of hidden costs, it would be foolish to take management's word that Qantas international is losing money. So why would Qantas want to make it look like Qantas international is losing money? Remember the failed 2007 private equity bid by the Allco Finance Group. It was rejected by shareholders, and thank goodness it was, for I am told that what we are seeing now is effectively a strategy of private equity sell-off by stealth.
Here is how it works. You have to keep Qantas flying to avoid breaching the Qantas Sale Act but that does not stop you from moving assets out of Qantas and putting them into an airline that you own but that is not controlled by the Qantas Sale Act. Then you work the figures to make it appear as though the international arm of Qantas is losing money. You use this to justify the slashing of jobs, maintenance standards and employment of foreign crews and, ultimately, the creation of an entirely new airlines to be based in Asia and which will not be called Qantas. The end result? Technically Qantas would still exist but it would end up a shell of its former self and the Qantas Group would end up with all these subsidiaries it can base overseas using poorly paid foreign crews with engineering and safety standards that do not match Australian standards. In time, if the Qantas Group wants to make a buck, they can flog these subsidiaries off for a tidy profit. Qantas management could pay the National Boys Choir and the Australian Girls’ Choir to run to the desert and sing about still calling Australia home, but people would not buy it. It is not just about feeling good about our national carrier—in times of trouble our national carrier plays a key strategic role. In an international emergency, in a time of war, a national carrier is required to freight resources and people around the country and around the world. Qantas also operates Qantas Defence Services, which conducts work for the RAAF. If Qantas is allowed to wither, who will meet these strategic needs?
I pay tribute to the 35,000 employees of the Qantas Group. At the forefront of the fight against the strategy of Qantas management have been the Qantas pilots, to whom millions of Australians have literally entrusted their lives. The Australian and International Pilots Association sees Qantas management strategy as a race to the bottom when it comes to service and safety. On 8 November last year, QF32 experienced a serious malfunction with the explosion of an engine on an A380 aircraft. In the wrong hands, that plane could have crashed. But it did not, in large part because the Qantas flight crew had been trained to exemplary world-class standards and knew how to cope with such a terrifying reality. I am deeply concerned that what is being pursued may well cause training levels to fall and that as a result safety standards in the Qantas Group may fall as well. AIPA pilots and the licensed aircraft engineers are not fighting for themselves; they are fighting for the Australian public. That is why I am deeply concerned about any action Qantas management may be considering taking against pilots who speak out in the public interest.
A lot of claims have been made about the financial state of Qantas international but given the information I have presented tonight, which has come from within the Qantas Group, I believe these claims by management are crying out for further serious forensic investigation. Qantas should not be allowed to face death by a thousand cuts—job cuts, route cuts, quality cuts, engineering cuts, wage cuts. None of this is acceptable and it must all be resisted for the sake of the pilots, the crews, the passengers and ultimately the future of our national carrier.
Qantas and the workers were ordered back to work by Australias workplace mediator, but I thought the interesting thing was that the ruling was based on the fact that the lockout was causing damage to the Aussie economy and not the current and previous 15 months of industrial action. Nice to see the big fish getting at least a share of the blame instead of the employees
Is there anything pilots outside Australia could do to support the Qantas crew? I don't know how much of that Senator story can actually be verified but if it's true that's just a blatant FU to the general public by the management.
After reading that peace I automatically though about Air Canada's plan to start a "no frills" airline.
---------- ADS -----------
Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. George Orwell
Disclaimer: The above post was not meant to offend anyone.
During Lorenzo's tenure, Eastern was crippled by severe labor unrest. Asked to accept deep cuts in pay and benefits, on March 4, 1989 Frank Lorenzo locked out Eastern's mechanics and ramp service employees, represented by the IAM (International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers).
Concerned that if Lorenzo was successful in breaking the IAM he would do the same to the pilots' and flight attendants' unions, the pilots represented by ALPA (Air Line Pilots Association) and flight attendants represented by TWU (Transport Workers Union) called a sympathy strike. Those actions effectively shut down the airline's domestic operations. Due to the lockout and sympathy strike flights were canceled, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars in revenue.
As a result of the strike, weakened airline structure, inability to compete after deregulation and other financial problems, Eastern filed for bankruptcy protection on March 9, 1989.
The management in the Miami-Dade county headquarters agreed to shut down Eastern. The airline stopped flying at midnight Saturday, January 19, 1991.
straightpilot wrote:on March 4, 1989 Frank Lorenzo locked out Eastern's mechanics and ramp service employees
straightpilot wrote:As a result of the strike, weakened airline structure, inability to compete after deregulation and other financial problems, Eastern filed for bankruptcy protection on March 9, 1989.
Obviously it wasn't just the strike, they were other issues as well at the time.
straightpilot wrote:The airline stopped flying at midnight Saturday, January 19, 1991.
That's a time line of just under 2 years. Therefore it couldn't be just because of the lockout/strike...As I said before, I have not sympathy for these upper management folks, none whatsoever!
straightpilot wrote:Then you should do everything you can to sabotage the company, to bring it down, and show those management types who is REALLY in charge!
Edmund Burke clearly knew nothing.
Contrary to your idea, I would do everything in my power to keep our airline alive! That means trying to work together on a solution to keep it financially and economically healthy. Giving CEO and upper management suits a raise, while demanding concessions and financial 'discipline' from employees doesn't fly with me. Either we are all on board or one of us is going home!
By the way, let me remind you, that those 'running the show' are NOT the OWNERS of Qantas! Just like AC, it was a crown corporation for 90 years and then subsequently privatized. Just because they hold majority of shares, doesn't give Joyce (or Milton, Montie Brewer or Calin) any more right then you, me or other thousands of employee there. That's what they seem to forget, because they are brought up with capitalistic ideas where they believe they can own everything and everyone!
