Business

Qantas tries to end cabin crew agreement over rostering fight

January 20, 2022 2:39 pm

Qantas will try to tear up the workplace agreement with its long-haul cabin crew. [Source: smh]

Qantas will try to terminate its workplace agreement with long-haul cabin crew, after the workforce rejected new “flexible” rosters the airline says it needs during its pandemic recovery.

The airline said on Thursday it had applied to the Fair Work Commission to tear up its long haul cabin crew agreement, as a “last resort to change restrictive and outdated rostering processes”.

Qantas’ long-haul cabin crew, which operate routes such as to North America and London, voted overwhelmingly (97 per cent) against a new agreement late last year which would have meant some crew could work across different aircraft types.

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Their union, the Flight Attendants Association of Australia (FAAA), has been contacted for comment.

Around 20 per cent of the 2500-strong workforce can only work on one aircraft type, the Airbus A330, which Qantas says is “unworkable” as it chops and changes its network while international travel demand slowly recovers from the pandemic. The proposed change would mean all crew could work on A330s, A380s and Boeing 787s.

Qantas said the FAAA’s counter offer would have cost the company $15 million annually over the agreement’s four years, which it could not accept.

“We can’t effectively run our business without the rostering changes we desperately need to properly restart our international network in a post-COVID world,” Qantas International CEO Andrew David said in a statement.

“Asking to terminate the current agreement is the last thing we want, but we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.”

If Qantas is successful in its application to the Fair Work Commission, the workforce would revert to the award wage, which is the industrial safety net, resulting in a pay cut from both the current and proposed new enterprise bargaining agreements (EBAs).