2 November 2011
Class war down under !
It’s full-on class war. Qantas is determined to deunionise its workforce and slash labour costs.
The airline’s sudden and arbitrary grounding of all flights was nothing short of a premeditated act of bastardry against its workforce and the travelling public.
The company’s actions and the struggle of its workforce to defend their jobs, wages and working conditions has brought to a head an insidious process that has been under way for decades.
The “globalisation” or equalisation of wages and working conditions in the name of competition is a race to the bottom. The cost of labour is not too high in Australia.
Working conditions are not unaffordable. Qantas workers insisting on their rights are not pricing themselves out of jobs.
It is the constant drive by the private sector to boost profits that is behind the attack on Qantas workers and other workers across the globe.
For decades, the private sector has been exporting jobs offshore, raking in ever larger profits through the super-exploitation of lower paid labour on unregulated and non-unionised labour markets.
The manufacturing sector in Australia was hit hard by trade liberalisation when tariffs and quotas were lifted.
In more recent times, technological developments have seen offshoring extended to jobs that no one a few decades ago would have imagined could be exported.
Qantas has offloaded a large proportion of its potential domestic and international operations to Jetstar.
As reported previously in The Guardian, foreign crew employed by it subsidiary Jetstar have been working shifts as long as 20 hours on a base monthly wage of $258.
The media, Murdoch’s Australian newspaper in particular, have backed Qantas and other corporations in their offensive against Australian workers and trade unions.
Repeatedly, they accuse the trade union movement of “intransigence”, of threatening to wreck productivity and costing workers their jobs.
David Greig’s “Qantas unions in a time warp” (The Australian, 26-10-2011) was a classic piece of employer propaganda, trotting out the all too familiar myths about competition, deregulation, higher productivity (read profits) and flexibility benefiting workers.
“The only way to secure aviation jobs in Australia is to make it uneconomic to send them abroad,” Greig claims. How do you do that?
One method is to pay them “third world” rates on a non-union deregulated labour market where there are no limits to the hours worked or protection of conditions.
Get rid of those “generous work roster and restrictive maintenance work practices” – that’s the way to go according to Greig.
“The unions need to change tack and work hard with management to find ways of increasing flexibility and producing more per employee,” Greig says.
What, fewer pilots in the cockpit? Passengers load their own luggage? Qantas already has passengers weighing and checking in their own luggage.
Cut back on maintenance checks by aircraft engineers – wait until something goes wrong?
Greig’s advice means one thing.
The same thing that Qantas, the banks, the manufacturers and other corporations are after: lower wages, longer hours, slave-like working conditions and short cuts with safety.
If the unions and workers won’t cop it in Australia then go offshore or bring in guest workers.
There is another option, one that Qantas and the likes of Greig are not prepared to consider.
It involves public ownership and control of Qantas and re-regulation of the industry.
Australia’s national carrier should be in public hands, its workforce guaranteed a decent income that recognises their skills and experience with good working conditions and safety a priority.
All airlines flying in Australia should be obliged to meet minimum standards as negotiated with the relevant trade unions in an industry agreement.
That would soon secure the rights and jobs of Qantas staff. Qantas and Jetstar employees deserve the full support of all Australian workers and the wider community.
It is crunch time.
Time to take the employers and government on
