Qantas crews declare turbulance ahead

QANTAS flight attendants yesterday struck the first blow in what could be a protracted battle when a Sydney meeting of more than 200 cabin crew voted unanimously to support industrial action aimed at stoping jobs going offshore.
The vote buoyed officials from the Flight Attendants Association of Australia, who said they had no reason to believe other meetings scheduled in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth over the next two weeks would return a different result.
The union opposes a Qantas plan to save $18 million by basing 400 long-haul flight attendants in London and attempts by the airline to lift a cap on offshore cabin crew.
Union officials claim offshore flight attendants will have to work up to 30 per cent longer for similar pay, that the move will limit overseas travel opportunities for Australian-based crew and that it will weaken the union’s ability to take industrial action.
The airline says there will be no job losses, flight attendants’ salaries of about pound stg. 24,050 ($61,500) will be comparable to what they’re earning now and their packages will be competitive with other UK-based crew.
FAAA international division secretary Michael Mijatov said the meeting empowered the union to call any sort of industrial action to prevent the establishment of a London base.
“We were very pleased – not one person was against the recommendation,” he said. “There’s no reason to suggest our group of flight attendants were a homogeneous group of people and if you have 200 people putting up their hand for something, there’s absolutely no way in the world that the other meetings will be substantially different.”
Even if the union gets the nod to take strike action, it cannot move until its current enterprise agreement expires in December.
Mr Mijatov said there were a number of options available to the union, including bans and strike action.
“I told them Qantas is not going to resile or recoil from this position based on simply words. This is going to take a protracted sort of response from us,” he said. “And they agreed with that.”