IR experts say Qantas arbitration process won’t drag on

National carrier Qantas says looming arbitration with key unions should give customers “absolute confidence” in booking flights, with industrial relations experts tipping a binding decision will be made sooner rather than later.

Amid predictions the process could take months, Hall & Wilcox partner Karl Rozenbergs says Fair Work Australia will work its hardest to bring an end to the long-running dispute, given Qantas’ importance for the tourism industry and getting people in and out of the country.

“They need a decision,” Rozenbergs says.

“It’s [the dispute] already been going on for six or seven months, and I expect given the way it has come about and the massive effects on tourism and people going overseas, there’d be a pretty quick turnaround.”

Rozenbergs says although he cannot read the minds of Fair Work Australia members, it’s likely that the industrial umpire will reject the bulk of the unions’ job security claims, deeming offshoring and contracting arrangements the prerogative of management and beyond their traditional remit of pay and working conditions.

“This [arbitration] falls into the strategy of Qantas, coming into the Christmas break. They would have thought about this carefully, decided that by doing what they did [locking out workers and stopping flights] the minister would step in.”

Qantas, which is losing $200 million per year on its international business, plans to boost its offshoring operations, with plans for a premium airline headquartered in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

The unions are calling for a limit on computer-driven maintenance on demand, pay parity for all crew across company units, and ratios covering the maximum use of contractors.

Talks between the Transport Workers Union (TWU), the Australian and International Pilots Association (AIPA), and the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association collapsed yesterday, with Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce saying the union’s “slow bake” of the airline could have lasted a year if arbitration did not proceed.

Under arbitration, strike action is not permitted.

The unions, however, accuse the airline of not displaying good faith during the 21 days of negotiations, which was ordered by the industrial umpire after the airline locked out workers and ground flights in October after months of industrial action by part of its workforce. Twenty-one days of talks were ordered, with the opportunity for a further 21 days if parties could show real progress had been made.

Rozenbergs also dismissed the likely success of a union appeal to the FWA decision to terminate industrial action last month. The AIPA is appealing Fair Work Australia’s decision to terminate industrial action in October, and the TWU will decide on Thursday whether to follow suit.

Meanwhile, Joyce’s evidence to a Senate committee that the airline decided to lock out workers and stop flights on Saturday, October 29, has been questioned.

ABC Television’s Lateline program yesterday quoted two workers at a courier company, saying they were contacted earlier that week for a job distributing lockout notices on Sunday October 30.

A Labor MP and former TWU official, Alex Gallacher, has also questioned why some Qantas senior managers were sent overseas in the lead-up to the announcement.

In response, Qantas said the “unions had indicated that they were planning on ramping up industrial action around our annual general meeting [on Friday] and as such four members of cabin crew management were sent to Singapore and Los Angeles.”