Alan Joyce should be sacked

As an undergraduate in Economics and Commerce, I studied both Labour Law and Industrial Relations. I found the subject fascinating, even though I was critical of the union movement at the time. This was in the era when Robert J. Hawke was the President of the ACTU. It was a period where there was a lot of industrial action, lots of strikes but I cannot remember any lockouts. However, in later years we had the dramatic Patrick’s lockout, and as I recall there was the drama of an airline strike where the Air Force was brought in to run Air Traffic Control. In those early days, especially in Victoria we had a lot of disruption from the workers involved in generating electricity, as well as train drivers and tram drivers. For me personally, this meant having to find alternative means to get to school, and later to university. From this background I have never been union friendly. However, that does not mean that I will not support union action when I believe that there is sufficient reason to “put up a fight”. It does not mean that I believe that unions should be disbanded. Rather, it means I believe that people have a right to join a union if they desire, and that there are some protections that are afforded by being a member of a union, but at the same time, the unions should not have the right to spend and waste the members’ money, especially on political donations and the funding of advertising for the ALP.

This leads me into the issues relating to the extraordinary action taken by QANTAS management aka Alan Joyce, and why I believe that the man should be sacked as the CEO of QANTAS and that the position should be given to someone who knows the culture, rather than some upstart outsider who had no experience with a large airline before taking on that role.

What most people do not understand is that there is indeed a culture at QANTAS that needs to be reformed. The engineers need to get over their white shirt attitude and get on the floor to properly oversee the workforce, but that is not the issue here. The real issue is the lack of job stability at QANTAS since Alan Joyce became the CEO.

For a long time I have been critical of the manner in which redundancies are announced at QANTAS. This is based upon personal (family) experience, where a member of my family was employed as a senior executive for a small successful business unit within QANTAS catering to the defence industry. He was tapped on the shoulder to go, having been there for a short time, because of the pay that he was receiving. It is hard to believe that they accepted what he had asked to join them, and then he was made redundant because of what he was earning. However, that is the way that QANTAS works and as a result of the lack of foresight, the business unit could not carry out its defence contracts and subsequently failed.  That lack of foresight is on the shoulders of one Alan Joyce who had taken over as CEO at the time that this family member was made redundant.

The number of redundancies at QANTAS have been doubling and even tripling over a period of a few short years. There are thousands who have been losing their jobs. The redundancies are without rhyme and reason because people are left grappling with picking up the extra workload.

With this background, that is the job instability that has been introduced under Alan Joyce as CEO, it is also necessary to look at what Alan Joyce desires for QANTAS. It is his desire to make QANTAS an Asian airline. In order to achieve that desire, he wants to shift the operation offshore. Under the arrangements when QANTAS was privatised that desire is not possible to be achieved. This means that they only way that Alan Joyce could achieve his goal with QANTAS is to trash the brand. This is what he did when he planned the lockout to coincide with people travelling to Melbourne for the running of the Melbourne Cup. He had no qualms about inconveniencing the travelling public with his one upmanship.

I have a reason for mentioning my own background with regards to at least a smattering of understanding of industrial relations. It is because at the very heart of these negotiations is the ambit claims that the union will put forward on behalf of the members who are being represented at the negotiation table. In the case of some of the QANTAS claims, one such ambit claim is the request for an aircraft hangar. I am not sure if the union is absolutely serious about that particular request, but I suspect it is placed on the table in order to gain a concession with regard to job stability.

At the very heart of the union claims and negotiations is the desire for job stability. This is a classic example of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The demand for a pay increase covers the desire for job stability. It is the need for job stability that is the greatest need, not the desire for a pay rise. In this particular case the union have stated that as far as the pay rise is concerned they want about $1 an hour extra. Is that really unreasonable enough to cause a lockout?

There had been some rolling stoppages that disrupted some members of the travelling public but the industrial action was not as chaotic or as disruptive as we have witnessed from union actions in the past.  However, management at QANTAS had been quite belligerent, and instead of allowing the baggage handlers one hour for a meeting, they said the baggage handlers would be docked a half-day pay. So what did the baggage handlers do? They had a half-day strike. In other words the industrial action was initiated by management aka Alan Joyce.

Alan Joyce did not suddenly come up with the decision for the lockout. This was something that was planned several months in advance. The culture at QANTAS management is that everything is planned in advance. He had to negotiate with other airlines to take on the QANTAS passengers that were stranded and on top of that he had to arrange for the hotel bookings for staff and passengers stranded overseas.  He did all of this secretly over a period of months.

It is disgusting that Alan Joyce granted himself a very huge pay rise – 71% in one year – and then he had the hide to claim that the airline could not afford pay increases for the 35,000 staff that are still employed with the airline. That huge increase could easily have paid for the union demands for a pay increase. Alan Joyce as CEO is not worth the $5.1 million that he is now earning. It would be better to sack him and choose an executive who is not a little twerp like Alan Joyce.

As of the early hours of this morning, the Fair Work Australia judges panel have ordered QANTAS to end the lockout, and so the planes will be flying again. My view is that the lockout was unnecessary action, but it was planned a very long time ago. Management should be listening to the staff and that means giving the assurances with regard to job stability.