NZFF

http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/travel-troub...nds-all-flights

Owch.... but I bet ANZ will be liking this !!

the cost off grounding .. scary thought , id hate to see the bill

Yep....phone is hot here tonight, 2 of my flatmates have been asked to go back to work early, to take up the slack. One of them only got back from Japan this afternoon....

How sad for Qantas. If their staff don't like their working conditions, perhaps they should go find a job somewhere else? It's not like they are slaves afterall. I'm not a fan of strikes etc. It just ends up hurting the end user, in this case all those passengers with ruined plans.

Yeah watching this still playing out live on sky news at 230 am ..

AlisterC wrote:

QUOTE (AlisterC @ Oct 29 2011,10:49 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

How sad for Qantas. If their staff don't like their working conditions, perhaps they should go find a job somewhere else? It's not like they are slaves afterall. I'm not a fan of strikes etc. It just ends up hurting the end user, in this case all those passengers with ruined plans.

Hey Alister. I hear ya, but its interesting to see that in this case there are multuple unions involved representing everyone from baggage handlers and catering through to the pilots. This isnt just your usual pay increase sort of demand, there are loads of issues, and it seems one of the most contentious ones is the likelyhood that Qantas will off-shore more maintananence and actually establish off-shore airlines that will operate the international routes from cheaper asian based locations instead of mainland aussie. You're right they arent slaves, but very soon they wont even have a job!!!

Well I guess that's fair enough Dean, sort of. At least it's not just over money. Good luck to them

have been watching this as well, the baggage handlers want some job security, and a small pay increase and negs were going well, Qantas had said that they would employ new people under the Qantas agreement, then two days later said that they will not employ anyone new in Qantas pay rates, and that they want to contract all work out for less money, so i can see where they are coming from, the pilots were still flying but making announcements and wearing red ties, hardly crippling stuff for the airline, and engineers where having rolling stops of 1 -2 hours, again hardly reason to shut down an airline. Qantas has already made it well known that they want to base the airline out of Australia and move it to an Asian based area where they do not have to employ staff on Australian rates. this has come to a head in the last couple of days due to the AGM where the board members all got about a 70% pay increase, the boss has now gone to $5mil a year, but yet they say that they cannot give baggage handlers and extra 3%. despite a 530mil profit last year.

my 2c worth is this has been done to force the gov to step in and tell the employees to go back to work and stop all strike action, i personally think that this has done more to damage the Qantas brand than they strikes had done, reminds me of the ash cloud all over again.

getting off my soap box now

deeknow wrote:

QUOTE (deeknow @ Oct 30 2011,9:07 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hey Alister. I hear ya, but its interesting to see that in this case there are multuple unions involved representing everyone from baggage handlers and catering through to the pilots. This isnt just your usual pay increase sort of demand, there are loads of issues, and it seems one of the most contentious ones is the likelyhood that Qantas will off-shore more maintananence and actually establish off-shore airlines that will operate the international routes from cheaper asian based locations instead of mainland aussie. You're right they arent slaves, but very soon they wont even have a job!!!

From what I gather, particularly in the case of the pilots, the main reason they want to outsource is simply because it costs such stupid amounts of money to hire Australians. They would not need to outsource if they could conduct their operations successfully using Australians, but the fact is the Aussies want so much money it just isn't practical. The unions need to realise they can have job security, or they can have awesome wages, they can't have both.

Brings back memories of the "old days" in this country when the Cook Strait Ferries went out just in time to stuff up Xmas for everyone, year after year.
Co-incidence that Melbourne Cup day is coming up, one of Aussies big iconic holiday events....?

I also experienced many years of strikes at NZ Forest Products in Tokoroa, the Unions may have won a point, the workers never did.

Despite everyone rushing to Aus for the alleged big money, a recent holiday there showed that all is not well, ask anyone working in retail
or making Holdens....

Wow, Air France is getting in on the action now too...