The Australian Services Union in Tasmania says that more than 500 Tasmanian call centre workers are afraid that they will lose their jobs to overseas if an $11 billion takeover of Qantas went ahead.
The centre at Tasmanian Technopark is the largest Qantas call centre in Australia and employs 550 people, including about 300 ASU members and ASU State Secretary Sean Kelly says that they’ve done the best they can over many years to introduce a whole range of efficiencies, taking pay cuts over a period of years all in the name of making sure the organisation can survive. He added in local media in Tasmania, “Now it looks as if … employees may be second-class citizens in this process.”
While Airline Partners Australia in its official bidder’s statement on Friday, promised to recoup its investment by expanding the carrier rather than cutting costs, polling by unions has shown that 75% of people believe jobs and services would suffer under the takeover and 80% supported calls for the Federal Government to place conditions on the sale.
Unions Tasmania Secretary Simon Cocker said the bidder’s statement was missing vital details on how regional services and jobs would be affected by the deal, adding, “The consortium has already given undertakings to maintaining the Qantas head office and the Qantas maintenance services in Australia, but what they haven’t done is talk about the regional services and the call centre staff, and we want them to give an undertaking on that.”
The Greens will also today propose a Senate inquiry into the sale, with the terms of reference to include impact on regional air services and implications for employees, with Tasmanian Greens Senator Bob Brown saying that the collapse of Ansett in 2001 strengthened the need for an inquiry, adding, “This billion-dollar deal has the potential to affect the lives of 38,000 workers, the impeccable safety and maintenance record of Qantas, regional services to Australia and the millions of customers that use Qantas every year”.
Report by The Mole
