Qantas flight attendants have had sufficient. They’re the most recent group of staff to check the nationwide service’s divide-and-conquer industrial relations technique, with two landmark claims by the Flight Attendants’ Affiliation of Australia (FAAA) within the Truthful Work Fee.
The flight attendants search regulated labour-hire preparations from the airline and considered one of its exterior labour-hire suppliers, Maurice Alexander Administration (MAM), beneath the Albanese authorities’s “identical job, identical pay” laws. The FAAA needs to align the pay and situations of flight attendants throughout the group who all do the identical job, thereby stopping Qantas from utilizing firms like MAM to rent flight attendants on decrease pay and situations.
The case looms as a giant take a look at for the Albanese authorities’s industrial relations laws, and comes as Qantas checks new Truthful Work Fee guidelines in its battle with pilots at its Perth-based subsidiary, Community Aviation.
Low pay
Flight attendants are the most important single group of staff at Qantas, consisting of 6,500 individuals throughout the group’s home and worldwide enterprise. They’re employed by way of a posh internet of subsidiaries and labour-hire teams, and their pay and situations have been focused by Qantas’ handsomely remunerated executives since 2008, the 12 months Alan Joyce was appointed chief govt.
Australian flight attendants’ pay per hour ranges from $56 down to only $29.20. Flight attendants employed on an informal foundation by MAM have been incomes $37.43 an hour with no sick pay, go away or superannuation, in keeping with a doc entitled “One Huge Loophole” produced by the Australia Council of Trades Unions final 12 months. For these charges of pay, flight attendants could be required to work shifts so long as 20 hours, FAAA president Teri O’Toole has stated.
Qantas Group employs all flight attendant employees by way of 14 totally different authorized entities and enterprise bargaining agreements. Employees are reluctant to make complaints as they want endorsements to have the ability to apply to considered one of these entities for full-time employment, O’Toole advised Crikey. This consists of refraining from reporting points corresponding to harassment, fatigue or something that may draw consideration to themselves.
O’Toole stated flight attendants are “first responders”.
“Within the air, there are not any police, no paramedics — solely flight attendants,” she stated.
“When there may be an emergency touchdown, as an illustration, and there may be a fireplace on board, flight attendants keep till the final passenger is off the airplane. And Qantas pays $29 an hour to try this.”
Offshore rent
In addition to dodging Australian labour legal guidelines, Qantas has additionally more and more been using offshore-based crews for worldwide flights in the UK, Singapore, New Zealand, Thailand and Indonesia.
Hourly pay charges for offshore flight attendants employed by Qantas are decrease than in Australia. In Thailand Jetstar, flight attendants are paid $2.16 an hour. The Thai crews then fly out of Australia on Jetstar plane, taking care of passengers on flights to different locations corresponding to Japan and the Philippines earlier than returning house. Jetstar flight attendants based mostly in Indonesia are paid $2.93 per hour. For comparability, within the UK, flight attendants are paid $20.34, and in New Zealand they’re paid $25.39 an hour, in keeping with the FAAA.
Crikey understands Qantas is planning to make use of NZ and UK flight attendants on its much-ballyhooed (and now delayed till mid-2026) ultra-long-haul “Mission Dawn” flights, which promise direct flights from the east coast of Australia to London and New York. For example, Qantas would take a New Zealand crew on its Sydney-Auckland-New York flight after which use them on the New York-Sydney return flight, after which on the flight again to Auckland.
The corporate confirmed this week that Airbus has gained regulatory approval for an additional petrol tank (and extra carbon emissions) for the A350 that will probably be used on the 20-plus-hour flights. Nonetheless, there are questions regardign the bodily influence of such flights on employees. Qantas pilots inform Crikey that presently on 16-hour-plus Auckland-New York flights, economic system passengers emerge “like zombies”.
In the meantime, there are indicators the pilot disaster in Qantas’ regional subsidiaries is beginning to chunk, with mainline B737 planes taking on main routes to Darwin from Perth and Melbourne which were serviced by Community Aviation and Nationwide Jet Techniques, respectively. Pilots advised Crikey Qantas was having specific bother signing up pilots to fly its new A220 plane operated by Nationwide Jet Techniques, the employees from that are paid decrease wages than Qantas mainline pilots who fly on the identical routes on B737s.
O’Toole stated that the FAAA has additional actions it could possibly take within the Truthful Work Fee, however that this was a serious take a look at for Qantas chief govt Vanessa Hudson, who’s smarting from opposed and costly authorized findings in opposition to Qantas from Joyce-era unlawful baggage handler sackings and the promoting of ghost flights.
“Vanessa has talked large about change, about doing issues in a different way from the previous. She has talked about eager to work higher with unions who symbolize her staff,” O’Toole advised Crikey.
“And this case, our case, is the primary case in opposition to Qantas, and it’s a possibility for her to decide. To take a seat down with us and negotiate an final result, or to go to the Excessive Courtroom like Alan did.
“This would be the first take a look at of, are you going to take a seat down and make a deal? Or are you going to battle your staff within the Excessive Courtroom about paying them pretty the identical job, identical pay?”
