QANTAS will shut down its fleet due to union demands.

QUANTAS, Australia's biggest and longest running airline has just announced a shut down off all domestic and international operations due to an ongoing battle with unrealistic unions. CEO Alan Joyce has taken a stand against the unions and really its about time someone did. Unions in Australia have way too much power and now due to their stupidity they have forced the shut down.

 

How dare those greedy workers ask for more money, the CEO just gave himself a $2mil a year pay rise, where do they think that money is going to come form.

 

According to wiki Qantas is $249m in the black for 2011 so they don't seem to be in danger of going broke. Time will tell who will give in first, the company or the workers.

 

http://atwonline.com/operations-mai...calls-union-demands-reckless-unrealistic-0516

Unions have too much power and its good to see someone standing up to them. And poor old juLIAR gillard is going to cop it if she weighs in too, if she goes against the unions she will lose what little support she does have and if she sides with the unions she will be seen as anti business...

 

Thats not even enough to cover ONE a380 airbus...

 

It's called a loan. You don't actually think they save up the money when they decide to buy 30 planes, do you?

 

No i was just putting how small their profit really is in context of what they do...

 

What's the Quantas record on atmospheric pollution ?

 

Re; your sig line. If you don't know the answer perhaps you should have lived as a black person for a while...
White 'pride' rallies do nothing but try to emphasise the ludicrous concept of the superiority of one race, white, over another. They also tend to be populated by knuckle-dragging Nazi skinhead morons.

Back on topic; I see no issue with striking for better pay and conditions when a CEO is awarding himself obscene pay rises-which he wouldn't be able to do without those very same striking workers who earned it for him.

 

Just so you know, black racism towards whites is just as bad and in cases worse...

the CEO does a lot more than just throw some bags around and he is due FAIR pay for that. QANTAS pilots and ground staff are paid better than any other aussie based airline staff yet they want more and more...AND they want to dictate the company's future direction to the company. Line the unionist scum-bags up and shot them.

 

'Fair' is subective isn't it? I guess any pay increase one awards oneself is going to be 'fair'...
As for your infantile comment on shooting unionists-Hitler would have been proud of you.

 

The notion that "unions can have too much power" is ludicrous.

The people can never have enough power.

It's what they want to do with it that is of the essence.

 

gamewell45;

You ain't an American politician, are ya ?

 

So the union doesn't want the stock holders to get any dividends? The workers want $160m which leaves little for the stock holders and less incentive for investors to buy stock.

I have a good friend that is proud to be black. He is younger than me, has had kids with four different women and has 19 grandkids. He told me that they all got together at a birthday party form him and he didn't know any of the grandkids.

The black community having 70%+ kids born with no father is a point of pride.

I don't know how many workers Q has but I doubt that his obscene raise would give each of them much of a raise. As far as whether he earned a raise or not; that I can only guess. He did make a profit for the company and it appears that the union doesn't have the stock holders in mind.

What about the people who own the companies? Should they have any power?

 

So now the workers want to tell the company how much to pay the CEO when none of them can do his job. Unions need to be brought under control.

 

More importantly Quantas is failing.. Ever wonder WHY?

Union membership is at a 30 year all time low.

 

Loans aren't how most large corporations pay for huge investments such as aircraft. Few, if any lending institutions are willing to make loans that big.

What corporations end up doing is issuing bonds or stocks. The value of the stock is directly tied to the profit the corporation makes - more profit, more money for issuing stock. Bonds work in a similar way, the more profit a corporation earns, the more confident people are in the company and the lower an interest rate the corporation will have to pay.

Cutting the profit margin will make it more expensive for them to do business, further cutting the profit margin.

 

Then Quantas needs to cut cost so it can prosper for all of the employees.

 

This whole thing shows that the distribution of power is actually pretty fair.

The union can stop production and profit of a company by striking.
The company can cut all pay and benefits to the union by shutting down.

Both are exactly the same WMD negotiation tactics. What is wrong with the company using the same tactics as the union?

 

Nice try. But wrong.

Qantas is making 249 million PER YEAR.

The union's request for $160 million is OVER 3 YEARS!

That leaves $200 million profit for stockholders, except that Qantas, like every other airline, will raise their ticket and baggage and freight prices next year and the year after that and the year after that!

Those worker raises will be pretty small by the time they are actually paid!

My friend, disabled woman in her 50's, is m much the same situation. Her father, after abandoning her and her siblings when she was 3 yo, had two more wives and 6 more children, and now has another wife. Several of the grandchildren he won't even acknowledge because they are of mixed race.

He is very proud to be WHITE, and is on the board and is a respected member of his Right Wing Evangelical church.

What was your point?

His $2 million pay raise, over three years, would pay 10% of the union's request all on its own.

Its a nice start. Of course, next year he'll get another, and the year after that he'll get another! Probably equals 20% of the union request before it is done. Oh, yeah, he will need ANOTHER special pay raise because the workers got a raise if the union prevails!

 

Your math doesn't work.

The union wants $160m over three years, or $53m a year.
Assuming the CEO got a $2m per year raise, that is less than 4% of the money the union is demanding. Far less than the 10% you claim.

 

There is a lot more to this than "Greedy Unions". All they have asked for is for the purchasing power of their wages to be maintained.

Qantas was subject to a private equity bid that failed in 2007. The Boyze behind that bid control the Qantas management and are trying to drive the share price down and take it over.

I have been following this for years, Qantas is a classic case study in how NOT to run an airline.

 

QANTAS has taken the only action available to them under the "Fair Work Australia Act". I support them all the way. They have been trying reallly hard to sit down and reach a resolution with the Unions but because our Unions have too much power and are unrealistic, it isn't going anywhere. The Unions in Australia have a habit of "flexing their muscles". QANTAS knows that this action will affect them a lot but it is better than letting the Unions take action well into the next year, especially when QANTAS has already lost $70 million to this Union campaign and constantly losing $15 million a week. It's about thime the unioins listen rather than try and argue every little thing!!!

 

Interesting, Frodo!

Got any links or something?!

 

It's not the unions that made the decision to just keep the aeroplanes on the ground...