QANTAS Grounded, Gillard Needs To Fly – Video

Posted on Sun 10/30/2011 by PA Pundits - International

By Andrew Bolt

With continuing industrial action on many fronts, and with a number of Unions involved, the CEO of QANTAS, Alan Joyce, has grounded the whole fleet of aircraft in the Airline, both Domestic and International. These continuing industrial disputes are costing the Airline Millions of dollars each day. The Unions have obviously been seeking to use the threat of continued disruption as a figurative ‘gun at the head’ of one of the World’s largest, safest, and most profitable Airlines, in a time when major World Airlines are finding things difficult. CEO Alan Joyce has effectively called ‘Check’ in this so far one sided ‘Chess game’.

QANTAS is the acronym for Queensland And Northern Territory Aerial Services. It is the second oldest Airline in the World, and has been flying passengers since 1920, and to this day, has not ‘lost’ one aircraft…..TonyfromOz.

QANTAS A380 Airbus

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is given yet another test with this QANTAS dispute – and one she’s not doing so hot on already:

Prime Minister Julia Gillard declared last night she was proud of her industrial relations laws after the government dramatically intervened in the dispute.

As Ms Gillard rejected Tony Abbott’s accusation she should have acted earlier, she defended her Fair Work Act, which replaced the previous Howard Government’s controversial WorkChoices laws.

“Looking at the Fair Work Act and the tests for having Fair Work Australia deal with the dispute I do not believe we reached the appropriate point in its dispute for Fair Work Australia to intervene until we saw the escalation of the dispute today,” Ms Gillard said.

UPDATE

From the letters page of The Australian:

I THINK the travelling public should have some idea of just how poorly off our Qantas baggage handlers are.

For starters, they get paid upwards of 20 per cent above the industry rate and earn between $70,000 to $85,000 a year including penalty rates but not overtime. Overtime is paid at double time as are any public holidays…

If you get called in to work by choice when rostered off, regardless of the time spent at work, you get paid a minimum four hours at double time.

There are a multitude of miscellaneous penalty rates paid as well. In addition to all this, QANTAS baggage handlers get significantly discounted domestic and international air travel. Their children are the envy of the playground.

They can get up to five days off in a fortnight due to a user-friendly shift roster… They get five weeks’ annual leave, generous sick leave conditions and a well managed and flexible superannuation fund. Yep, it’s a terrible lot for our hard working baggage handlers. Who in their right minds would want to work under these conditions?

UPDATE 2

CEO Alan Joyce speaks with Andrew on this mornings Bolt Report.

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

Andrew Bolt’s columns appear in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide’s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and hosts Channel 10’s The Bolt Report each Sunday at 10am. He is also heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of radio station MTR 1377, and his book Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/