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General
Trade Union movement
Howard sells out Qantas workers
Unions today called on the Federal Government to protect Qantas jobs, safety, services and standards and expressed strong concerns about the impact of the proposed private equity buy-out of Qantas.
Unions fear the takeover of Qantas by a private equity consortium will cost thousands of jobs and put downward pressure on workers' wages and conditions while bonuses for senior executives will go through the roof.
Qantas is one of Australia's largest employers with around 37,000 staff. More than 90% of Qantas staff are union members.
QANTAS UNIONS' MEDIA CONFERENCE 20/12/2006: TRANSCRIPT
GREG COMBET, ACTU:
This is a takeover that we're extremely concerned about on behalf of the Qantas staff. We don't think this is in the long-term interests of the airline. We don't think it's necessarily in the national interest either that Qantas be de-listed and taken over by a private equity consortium and the reasons for that boil down to a few simple things.
One of them is from a commercial standpoint. This takeover will burden Qantas with an enormous amount of debt and this is a company that will be even more sensitive in the future to interest rate movements and movements in fuel prices, international oil prices.
I think that businesses, airline businesses, as we've come to know from representing staff over a number of years particularly during the Ansett collapse, these sorts of businesses are very sensitive to a range of other factors, not the least of which of course is capacity to service debt, the number of people who might be flying, the sorts of routes that are involved.
So we are quite concerned about the commercial aspects of the deal for a start.
But at a second level - and our core business is representing the employees of Qantas - and we're very concerned that this takeover ultimately might lead to a loss of Australian jobs.
There's a potential and there's a track record with owners like this for the break-up of the company or the spinning off and selling of particular parts of the company, the offshoring of jobs in maintenance areas or call centres for example.
Dynamics which we have seen in a number of Australian companies and we think that this will only accelerate the pressure for that to occur. For that reason we believe the Federal Government has an important role to play in consideration of this takeover of Qantas.
We believe there are strong national interest arguments that mean that the Government must stand up for Australian jobs.
The Treasurer, in particular, has a statutory capacity to impose conditions on any proposed takeover of Qantas even if it remains within majority Australian ownership. And those powers should be used we believe to protect regional routes and the jobs of workers in Qantas and associated companies in regional areas. And we believe that those powers should be used to ensure that we don't see a break-up of the company and the loss of jobs to overseas and in particular areas like maintenance and customer service call-centre operations.
It all boils down to a simple thing and that is standing up for Australian jobs in circumstances like this where a large national Australian company, an icon company. We think the Government should stand up for Australian jobs. That's where we stand. We're fighting on behalf of the Qantas employees to make sure they get the maintenance of good job security and the maintenance of good pay and conditions.
The other great threat with this takeover, of course, is that the Government's new industrial relations laws will be able to be used to diminish people's pay and employment conditions. We may see, we do not know, but we may see the offer of more individual contracts - John Howard's favourite AWAs. These things can cut pay and conditions and we may also see the capacity under the law to be used to establish employer greenfields agreements. These are outrageous things where new operators can write employment conditions in their own terms without reference to the employees.
So there's a lot of risk involved in this for Qantas employees and we are determined to represent their interests and try and minimise that risk and we also want to see the Australian Government stand up for Australian jobs.
With me is Bill Shorten, representing quite a lot of the maintenance employees in Qantas and Linda White, representing the interests of many of those who work in customer service positions and other positions throughout Qantas and they may wish to add a few remarks.
LINDA WHITE, Australian Services Union:
Qantas workers are extremely concerned about this development. They are calling on the Australian Government to stand up for Australian jobs. After all who else is there left to stand up for the national interests other than the national Government. Throughout January our members will be campaigning hard in the areas that they live to send a strong message to their members of Parliament that they cannot be ignored and that, for them, Qantas is a great Australian company that has to stay in Australian hands and that they oppose this takeover and they want significant assurances about their job security and keeping jobs in Australia. They do not want to see, as we have seen this year, jobs going offshore to India. They want to see good Australian jobs stay, and good customer service stay in Australia. They want to see the maintenance of Australian standards from this great Australian airline.
BILL SHORTEN, Australian Workers' Union:
From an engineering perspective, what our members are concerned about is that Qantas is the world's safest airline. We want to make sure that if these private equity operators come in that they don't cut standards and jobs. Qantas engineers are the best in the world, they are amongst the most efficient and flexible in the world. We don't want to see these jobs sent to the Philippines or the United States. We are the gold medal winners in aeroplane safety in the world and we do not want to see that change. We are concerned that this private equity deal could be like some Wall Street II, that Michael Douglas film where in fact private equity raiders bought the airline and there was a real danger about jobs and safety. It is very important that the Australian Government doesn't let Qantas and this takeover turn into some down-under version of Wall Street where the debt is the only thing left flying in Qantas.
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