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Qantas Fleet Grounded


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Hmm, yes agreed Steve. I was recently (2weeks ago) talking to some recently retired QANTAS pilots and to a man they all reckoned that Joyce had absolutely no people skills. They'll and I'll bet those who appointed him CEO are now regretting the decision. From the perspective of people skills they all thought he had a dictatorial style. I think this will eventually be Herr Adolf Joyce's downfall, even in tv and radio dispatches he comes across to the public as dictatorial. As in "It's moi way orrr t' hoiway." I'm sure the board and Government won't tolerate this nonense for too long and the public won't either. I think that the letters to the editor section in all of Mondays and Tuesdays papers will have letters roundly condemning Herr Joyce. There will of coursee be some also condemning the engineers and others that are striking. QANTAS should never have been privatised as allof the directors and CEOs when it was owned by all of us oversaw years of growth for the most part and although there were problems over the years they were small compared to this.

Ross.

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Ah, I see you Aussies are also reaping the "benefits" of the privatisation of Crown corporations...

We had an Air Canada that's now a disaster; we had a Canadian National Railway that's a disaster AND the employees are forbidden by the American owners of calling it "Canadian National"; we had Polymer Corporation that was a world-dominant force in synthetic rubbers, whose Sarnia plant helped win WW2 and was once illustrated on our $10 bills, and now is... just gone. And that's just 3 former national Crown corps, and I haven't gone to the provincials...

Very interesting to see that it's backfiring elsewhere too, not just here. That even more suggests it's a Bad Idea.

Can the government legislate them back to work as an essential service or somesuch?

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I was at work today and was given about 15 mins notice that this was going to happen, we had to unload aircraft that were already loaded with pax bags....Also i was told {and i don't know if it's true but suspect that is} that qf 16 was loaded, locked up and ready to push back from LAX and was stopped from departing and all pax were offloaded

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qf 16 was loaded, locked up and ready to push back from LAX and was stopped from departing and all pax were offloaded

If you're the captain in this situation, what do you even say over the PA to the passengers?

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Or when you're the airport ops manager for the airline and have all those cheesed-off passengers screaming Breach of Contract and getting the lawyers on speed-dial?

I mean, I'm all for privatization if it's done right, but privatization should require a split into two competing private companies instead of one big monopoly, to start with, and I'd say that firms in "critical infrastructure industries" should have a requirement in their charters that majority ownership, whether simple half-plus-1 or supermajority, should be required to be held by citizens/corporations/entities of that flag.

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[quote name='ross blackford' As in "It's moi way orrr t' hoiway."

Ross.

I get that from my boss as well........ And I don't work for QF

I was shocked to hear that QF was grounded. For while I had suspicion that this would happen, but I didn't think it would happen this quick.

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I get that from my boss as well........ And I don't work for QF

I was shocked to hear that QF was grounded. For while I had suspicion that this would happen, but I didn't think it would happen this quick.

So Oi tairk it tat you woork for n oirishman too. We have an oirish electrician at work but he's a pretty sensible one, except when he's had a few whiskeys, ten he moight jost as well be speakin' swahili.

:cheers:,

Ross.

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Typical unions, our way or we strike.

Read the article, this is a lockout....that means MANAGEMENT decide to shut the doors on it's employees and most of all its customers......

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Typical unions, our way or we strike.

Aside from what crazydon pointed out - this isn't the union doing it - well... no kidding? That's the only thing workers/unions have at their disposal to prevent (extreme) exploitation by The Mgmt.

Not trying to get political there, just making a definition. Striking is really the one effective bargaining chip workers have.

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A lockout because the unions keep striking and disrupting business? Also where is the evidence of exploitation?

Its a terrible bargaining chip, you can't tell me any small wage gains make up for the money lost by not working.

Sure the CEO seems like a dick and should not have got a huge pay rise (it really annoys me me that there is no pay rise for us workers, but the bankers and bosses can find the money for themselves) but from a business point of view (something the unions never seem to get) shutting out people you can't guarantee are going to work makes sense.

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:D, As Litvyak has said strike action is really the only bargaining chip the workers have in their arsenal, unlike management. In Australia we still work under the master/servant relationship idea, as does business in most of the rest of the world, and one of the premises of this relationship is that the master can do what ever he/she wants. There's another name for this; it's called exploitation. even one of the other QANTAS shareholders has come out and said that Herr Joyce's 70% pay rise that he has awarded himself is ludicrous, and it is.

Basically he is paying himself and extra 70% to run the airline into the ground whilst denying the people who actually make the money for the shareholders a few measely % in increased wages and allowances. Fair? I don't bloody think so. And he's using the O/S competition card to do it. What a crock I say. It's like a number of the O/S CEOs we get here. They come here with one thing in mind. How they can feather their own nests whilst grinding the organization into the ground. They then POQ somewhere else and leave it for some other poor bugger to clean up their mess.

Sorry, but we've seen this all too often in the last 20 years. There was the Telstra debacle and in NSW the NSW Police Service debacle. Personally I can't see any need whatsover to bring idiots like this from O/S when there are perfectly capable Aussies who can and will do the job much more competently and for a lot less. The QANTAS CEO 2 removed was a people's man and wouldn't have let things get to this stage. Oh, and he was a pilot who had climbed through the ranks to the position of CEO so he knew how to run an airline.

That imported police commisioner's successor cleaned up his predecessor's mess in a couple of years and worked for less than half what his previous boss had demanded and got from the NSW taxpayers. But, we know they want more. When the imported police commissioner's contract was coming to an end he made the fatal mistake of demanding even more for his services, at which time there was a public outcry and it became crystal clear that he "had to go". Perhaps the Australian public should do the same in this case. Alternative4, Herr Joyce's side of the story isn't the only one mate, and his credibility with the Australain public is waning by the hour. He "needs to go" in no uncertain terms.

Some ex-QANTAS pilots I was talking to a couple of weeks ago said thare is more than one way to skin a cat and their opinion was that Herr Joyce won't win this one. He doesn't have public support whereas the pilots, engineers and ground staff do and more and more people are turning up at QANTAS HQ to demonstrate their disapproval of what Herr Joyce is doing to our airline. He seems to have forgotten about the social networking sites on the interwebz. They can be a powerful tool for mobilising public opinion as has been seen in the Middle East in recent months. This one isn't over yet.

Ross.

ps Altrernative4, the strikes weren't 24hour seven day strikes, they were for a maximum of 24 hours perhaps one day a fortnight, it never got to the "won't work situation" so please don't try to pull that one on us. Herr Joyce has succeeded in shutting down the airline completely, no money coming in so his pay should also be docked and if I had my way a board would be given the power to docke the pay of the CEO in cases of lockouts like this. Oh and ask anyone who's worked under him and he doesn't just seem like a dick, he is one in their eyes especially the pilots, engineers and ground staff.

Edited by ross blackford
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Hi Ross...a small correction re the work stoppages:

There have been a total of less than 10 hours of stoppages in this current dispute. The pilot's have not stopped at all - they're merely taken to not wearing their caps, wearing red ties instead of black, and making short announcements over the PA system.

The lockout by Mr Joyce seems to me to be overkill, and totally over the top compared to the protected industrial action taken by the various unions. Furthermore, Mr Joyce et al seemingly have not entertained the idea of good-faith negotiations, which is part of any EBA.

One could argue that since the lock out was planned at least 12 days ago, the shareholders should have been notified at the recent AGM, but were not. ASIC could well be interested in a "please explain.."

It is interesting to note that at the current FWA meeting, management argued for a termination rather than suspension (the unions' stance) of all industrial action, citing safety reasons.

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Surely there has to be a better way to resolve things? What a lose-lose situation.

The damage to their reputation would far exceed any monetary losses. I doubt many people would be booking flights with Qantas again.

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:D, Interesting to read some of those posts in that thread damo. And it is quite a long thread already. I don't know if Haw Haw was shot in the rear end. If he wasn't he should have been, he was another little ****hole. When are we going to learn? These people have no interest in anything to do with the business they are appointed to run, only in ripping the guts out of the business whilst awarding themselves huge pay rises and then when it all turns to doo doo in their hands the cry "It wasn't my fault, I tried to negotiate with these scoundrels but they wouldn't come to the table so I had no other choice than to lock them out." They then return whence they came and as I said before, some other poor bugger has to clean up after them.

Ross.

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Gosh this looks really bad...

Didn't EASTERN Airlines have a lock out a few years back and they went into liquidation and then

Eastern Airline folded and was gone for ever..

do you think tht it could happen to QA. ?

Edited by HOLMES
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So Oi tairk it tat you woork for n oirishman too. We have an oirish electrician at work but he's a pretty sensible one, except when he's had a few whiskeys, ten he moight jost as well be speakin' swahili.

:cheers:,

Ross.

No i work for an Indian that thinks the cost of living Doesn't go up.

But i find it totally unnecessary to give the lepricorn a 70% payrise considering the price of QF's current share price considering it was nearly $6 before he took over as CEO

Edited by Aussie_superbug
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:D, Ah yes. Having several Indian businessmen friends I see what you mean. Exactly. One of them offered me a job when I got out of the RAAF, but I had to graciously decline. I could see immediate IR problems arising the minute I walked into his place of business. I knew him far too well. And yes I agree with you on the share price. Same thing happened with Telstra. They were two businesses that had pretty well always made a profit for their owners, ie the people of Australia. That is until a couple of imports were appointed to run them. Until Herr Joyce came here even QANTAS was making a profit during bad times. That must say something.

:cheers:,

Ross.

Edited by ross blackford
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This makes very interesting reading..

http://www.pprune.org/dg-p-reporting-points/467610-merged-qantas-grounded-effective-immediately.html

And wasn't Lord Haw Haw shot in the rear end?

:D, Hi damo, I've just done a little research on William Joyce. He wasn't shot but hanged at Wandsworth in 1946, the last person to be executed in the UK for treason. An interesting comparison has come out of my research. Lord Haw Haw was born in Brooklyn New York in 1905 to an English Protestant mother and an Irish Catholic father, but a few years after his birth the family returned to County Galway where he was put in school at the Jesuit St. Ignatius college. Allan Joyce was born in Tallagh, now a suburb of Dublin.

There was a great photo of him in yesterdays Herald, alongside an article by Dick Smith saying how the QANTAS management must win this one. everyone in my office looked at the photo then read the article and laughed. That was a stroke of great journalism, putting a photo taken from a low angle of Joyce with that supercilious look on his face beside an article written by another well known union basher.

Ross.

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