Qantas ready to sidestep unions

Qantas CEO Geoff Dixon has declared the time is right to bypass the union movement and introduce a range of AWA’s.

Speking on Channel Nine yesterday, Mr Dixon said “We have 16 unions, we have 45 enterprise bargaining agreements within this company and 20 of them, or 15 of them, are live at the moment, in other words, we are negotiating them.”

“We will be announcing very shortly that we are going to put AWAs into certain areas of the Qantas group,” he said, without disclosing any more details.

“We’ll announce that [AWAs] as we go forward but that’s something we haven’t said before but we have come to the conclusion in recent months that we need a range of industrial instruments and we will be still, very much, having our enterprise bargaining agreements with a lot of our people, but where we need greater flexibility, where we think it’s better utilised, we will be using AWAs,” he said.

“There’ll be about 1000 management positions going within the next six to nine months.”

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union national secretary Doug Cameron retaliated last night, calling it “bad news for Qantas workers”.

“We would warn Qantas employees that a move to AWAs would be a reduction in penalty rates and staff allowances.”

ACTU president Sharan Burrow said it was “incredible that Qantas – with the profits it’s demonstrated, with the obscenity of the salary levels of management – can turn around to their own workers and say, ‘We’re going to force you onto AWAs’.”

Australian Services Union assistant national secretary Linda White said Mr Dixon had been a posterboy for the Howard Government’s industrial laws, and it was no surprise he wanted to introduce individual contracts.

She predicted his comments would make the unions work more closely together.

“I guess what he needs to understand is there is significant resistance to AWAs out there in the workforce,” she said.

ACTU secretary Greg Combet said he would seek details about the proposed AWAs from Mr Dixon today. “We’ve worked well with Qantas over a long period of time to try to make sure the company improves its competitiveness,” he said.

“It’s been a very constructive relationship, so naturally any suggestions by Mr Dixon that the company might change its strategy away from collective bargaining and towards individual contracts is a concern to us.”