Isherwood: Qantas following Ansett? Nationalise it

Isherwood: Qantas following Ansett? Nationalise it

June 24, 2011 - Qantas is indicating it can’t work as a business, without busting its unions, eroding workers’ conditions and outsourcing to cheaper offshore locations, so it should be renationalised, Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood said today.

Mr Isherwood was responding to the 22nd June National Press Club address of Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, who declared that unless Qantas restructured its international operation, including, potentially, moving offshore to Singapore, it could follow Ansett Airlines into extinction.

“Whether Joyce is just making a threat, or Qantas crashing like Ansett is a real possibility, the Government should solve the problem by renationalising our national airline,” he said.

“The ‘s’ in Qantas stands for ‘services’, and maintaining service should be the Government’s priority.

“Hawke and Keating shouldn’t have privatised Qantas in the first place, so before it is run into the ground, let’s save it as an essential service, by taking it back into public ownership.”

Qantas is at war with its unions, hell-bent on slashing the salaries of its pilots, engineers and flight attendants to bring the whole airline into line with its cut-price Jetstar operation. Jetstar employs Thai-based flight attendants on a base rate of $437 per month; other flight attendants complain of being “drunk with tiredness” at the end of 15-hour shifts; Jetstar International makes applicants for flight attendant jobs pay an $89 “interview fee”; prospective pilots are charged a $150 interview fee, and then $33,000 to train to fly the new Airbus 330-200. Back in 2006, Alan Joyce defended the pay régime for Jetstar by attacking the Qantas pilots and flight attendants: “They are overpaid. They are not competitive,” he said.

Mr Isherwood continued, “Before any brain-dead free market zombie defends the management of the privatised Qantas, consider the case of Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger, the US Airways pilot who saved 155 people when he guided his Airbus A320 down onto the Hudson River in New York on 15th January, 2009, to see where this is headed.

“Sullenberger courageously testified before the U.S. Congress that his pay had been cut by 40 per cent in recent years, his pension was worthless, he had to work a second job, and ‘pilots and their families were in an untenable financial situation’, which he blamed on airline deregulation.

“That is not how we should reward skilled people who have such an important job,” Mr Isherwood said. “The ‘free market’ is used as the excuse to rob people blind.”

Mr Isherwood noted that one “cost” that airlines complain about is airport landing fees, which airport owners charge airlines for using their terminals. Just before Sydney Airport was privatised in 2003, the Government allowed it to jack up its landing fees by 97 per cent, to profit its new owner—Macquarie Bank. (In 2008, Macquarie’s profit from Sydney Airport was an astounding 80 per cent of revenue.)

“These are the types of costs that are killing airlines, not decent wages for staff,” he said. “The good news is they are easily fixed—kick out Macquarie Bank and the other slumlords, and renationalise the airports too.”

ENDS

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