As my electorate is home to the Melbourne airport, I have many constituents who work in the aviation industry and who are employees of Qantas and its subsidiary Jetstar. So today I want to speak about the current round of Jetstar AWA negotiations and the implications these will have for Jetstar workers and the wider aviation industry.
Under these AWAs cabin crew who are conducting international routes will receive, in total, a package of between $41,000 and $46,000 a year, depending, of course, on how much they earn in commission from onboard sales of food, drink and other products. According to the Jetstar CEO, Alan Joyce, most people would regard this salary package as a phenomenal salary.
A representative of the Flight Attendants Association, Mr Michael Mijatov, begs to differ with Mr Joyce and he has described Jetstar’s treatment of staff as ‘cannon fodder’. The AWAs will mean that Jetstar cabin crew will be receiving 20 to 30 per cent less than comparable Qantas cabin crew who are engaged on international routes. When compared to the salary of $4 million per year for Qantas CEO, Geoff Dixon, you are indeed seeing a phenomenal discrepancy. It is obvious that while flight attendants’ wages are being eroded by Jetstar, no such belt tightening for the executives in the Qantas group seems to be in order. Executive pay will increase by a staggering and phenomenal $12.2 million. This is simply another example of the government’s industrial relations legislation creating a race to the bottom for wages for ordinary Australian workers and a race to the top for their CEOs.
Jetstar employees working international routes are being offered a package that involves commissions for the sale of pillows and blankets and that will see them work longer hours than their counterparts in Qantas. This attack on the employment conditions of flight crews sets a dangerous precedent for the aviation industry. It pits employees against each other and allows for a situation where the reduction of pay and conditions for one group inevitably will lead to a situation where other employers follow suit, confident in the knowledge that, if one set of workers in the industry accepts inferior conditions and wages, then others can be forced to do the same. This is how the government’s industrial relations legislation works. At the grassroots level it works to undermine the wages and conditions of workers who are part of a collective bargaining agreement process.
Qantas and its wholly owned subsidiary Jetstar have not ruled out using AWAs in other parts of the business. This is despite the fact that unions representing workers across the Qantas group have pointed out that collective bargaining agreements negotiated with unions have delivered Qantas flexibility, productivity improvements and record company profits, despite a global downturn in the aviation industry that has seen many airlines lose money and even fall.
