Qantas CEO Alan Joyce went to the Marrickville electorate office of Transport Minister Anthony Albanese on Friday, October 21, to warn of the looming crisis. He showed him the books to prove what would happen to Qantas if the unions continued with their demands. Nothing happened and negotiations with the union continued to stall.
Last Saturday morning at 10.30am the Qantas board gave unanimous approval for Joyce’s plan to give 72 hours notice of a lock-out of striking unions and to ground the airline. At 2pm Qantas group executive Olivia Wirth called Julia Gillard’s chief of staff and told him that Qantas CEO Alan Joyce was standing by to talk to the Prime Minister. He wanted to give the PM advanced warning of his intention to ground the entire fleet and a chance to call the unions off and declare all future industrial action illegal. But she refused to take his call and didn’t bother calling him back.
After Joyce made the announcement to ground the airline, the government called a crisis cabinet phone hook-up and decided that instead of calling an immediate termination of the dispute, a request for termination or suspension would be taken to Fair Work Australia. But Joyce said he wouldn’t put his planes back in the air unless there was a “termination” not a “suspension” of all industrial action.
Fair Work Australia’s head Justice Geoffrey Giudice said the unions had wanted a suspension of the industrial action for up to 120 days but the panel had decided that it wouldn’t give sufficient protection to the already damaged tourist and aviation industries. Their decision appears to vindicate Mr Joyce’s drastic strategy of grounding the fleet.
The cost of claims for accommodation and expenses will undoubtedly cost the company millions but the writing was on the wall without a miraculous intervention and Joyce delivered in spades. The question now is can they recover and continue to prosper?
But what about Joyce’s obscene salary package? He says he is paid less today than when he was CEO of Jetstar four years ago. He also says he took a 30% salary cut in 2009 and a 20% cut in 2010 and is not the highest paid employee in the company, “A380 captains get paid more by the hour than me” he said. He points out that the shareholders at the AGM last Friday voted 96% in support for the remuneration packages.
After seeing Transport Workers Union (TWU) national secretary Tony Sheldon on the television over the weekend, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a more aggressive union official - it’s in his speech and his general demeanour and he has the unfortunate habit of pointing his finger to emphasis his point. It’s easy to see why anyone having to deal with this man would have a problem.
On Saturday he made a speech in his typical gruff, aggressive fashion but this morning, he's a changed man. He’s stopped shouting and now speaks quietly, the finger pointing is almost gone and he’s stopped blaming Tony Abbott for everything.
If this is the man tipped to be the next National President of the ALP, after witnessing his performance over the weekend, it will give the electorate one more reason to vote Liberal at the next election.
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