To address the staff shortage,the airline introduced temporary capacity reductions of more than 10 per cent to boost the number of available staff. The airline has also hired more than 1500 people,with 80 per cent employed in operational roles such as cabin crew.
Qantas has been crippled by the number of staff falling ill due to COVID-19 and the flu,with sick leave tracking around 50 per cent higher than usual.Credit:Louise Kennerley
Last week,third-party provider Dnata,which is contracted to Qantas after the carrier outsourced baggage handling,was approved to vote on industrial action by the Fair Work Commission. The vote will determine whether the workers will take further action,including strikes that will increase strain on airlines and airports.
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The vote is the latest escalation of an ongoing stoush over pay and conditions. Workers angling for a new enterprise bargaining agreement that will increase part-time hours and the number of permanent employees.
Qantas outsourced baggage ground handling in 2020,resulting in 1700 redundancies. The Federal Court found the move was in breach of the Fair Work Act,a verdict the airline is appealing in the High Court.
Teri O’Toole,federal secretary of the Flight Attendants Association of Australia,questions how reducing the number of flights and extending domestic wait times will prevent baggage issues.
“No amount of extending the minimum connecting time is going to get you your bag if it wasn’t loaded properly to begin with. It’s a staffing crisis of their own making,” O’Toole said.
O’Toole suggested reverting the baggage check-in cut-off from half an hour to one hour may be a better way to address the crisis but maintained that,“at the end of the day this is a serious labour shortage caused because the airline sacked more than 1000 people and won’t admit it was the wrong decision;there is no coming back from that.”
Transport Workers Union national secretary Michael Kaine concurred with the Flight Attendants Association assessment.
“It’s day after day of band-aid responses from Qantas. Adding extra connection time will do nothing to alleviate the airport chaos we’ve seen under the Joyce model of illegal outsourcing,poor working conditions and low wages,” Kaine said.
Kaine said the skills’ shortage was not only the root cause of the airlines “plummeting” performance but entirely of its own making.
“The never-ending incidents of lost baggage,long delays and cancellations will only continue unless Qantas lifts its rock-bottom pay and conditions for workers,and reinstates the highly experienced ground crew that four Federal Court judges unanimously found the airline illegally sacked.”
The Transport Workers Union would like to see the federal government establish a Safe and Secure Skies Commission to “set fair standards across the industry and reorient airports and airlines towards investment in good,secure jobs and away from short-term profit focuses that have led us to this point.”
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