It looks like the Aussies are getting the British disease. All Quantas flights are cancelled due to a major strike. It could be Britain!! At least they waited for Liz and Phil the Bubble to leave! 🙂
Any comments from Aussie posters?
Update.
The airline has not been directly closed by a major strike. Qantas will lock out those taking industrial action on Monday and have closed down the airline as of now. None the less, the comparison with obstinate British unions remains.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Here in Australia we earn in Dollars and live with Dollars and Qantas must learn to pay proper Dollars that help our country prosper, not just peanut wages to some peasant overseas while they line their pockets with the rest of what’s left over
We cannot allow Qantas to take its maintenance areas overseas to rip off workers there by paying them peanuts while at the same time destroying job prospects here in an industry that all Australians helped to build.
Qantas is Australian
Better to see them go bust than let them do what BHP already did to us in the past.
Julia Gillard has now terminated the dispute and ordered both parties to the table. I guess we shall soon see what happens 😦
Quantas flights have NOT been cancelled because of strike action. The company has been shut down by its bully-boy CEO, Alan Joyce in an attempt to force the unions to accept non-acceptable conditions.
My daughter was on a plane bound for Sydney at Brisbane airport this afternoon when she was told to get off because Quantas was suspending all flights – until further notice. Quite how she will get to Sydney and Canberra to work next week or her partner will get to Sydney to work is, at this point, impossible to say… it’s a b***y long drive…
It is true that Quantas management and the unions have been in dispute for some long time, which has recently lead to industrial action by the unions. In fact, a recent poll has shown that most (60%) people are in support of the the workers. It is, as Donald says, that Quantas wants to take Quantas jobs to Asia and thereby destroy jobs in Oz.
Perhaps some of us would not worry too much about that, if Quantas did not insist on playing the “Australian Airline” card and claiming that they are Australia’s airline.
We might not mind so much, perhaps, if real competition was encouraged here – we have really on two domestic airlines: Quantas and Virgin.
But what is really p**ssing people off is that only yesterday the ‘big-end’ of town share-holders outvoted the Joe-Blog shareholders and awarded Alan Joyce a $3,000,000 bonus bringing his remuneration this year up to over $11 million.
Can some one please explain to me why Australian workers should lose their jobs to Asia on the grounds that it is the only way Quantas can survive when this man takes home $11 million dollars in one year… ?
And incidentally, Juliar has NOT ended the dispute. She has asked both sides to go to “Fair Work” – our version of arbitration.
Joyce has said that the LOCKOUT will continue until the unions give in…
… this may take some time since the unions have a big say in the present government.
I would be very worried at the prospect of engineering and maintenance jobs being moved from Australia to Asia. From what I’ve read, many Asian airports have the bad habit of using counterfeit parts bought cheaply, while of course charging the full price of an original. Passenger safety could be at risk.
Julia has not asked, she has “enacted” the fair work act and demanded both parties go to court, she has in fact ordered negotiation as only the Premiers and the Prime Minsters can do such a thing without a court order from the high court (or higher)
“Looking at the Fair Work Act and the tests for having Fair Work Australia deal with the dispute I did not believe we reached the appropriate point in its dispute for Fair Work Australia to intervene until we saw the escalation of the dispute today,” Ms Gillard said.
“I take absolute responsibility for the Fair Work Act. I am incredibly proud of it. It introduced fairness into Australian workplaces.”
The Victorian Government also commenced legal action under the Fair Work Act, with Premier Ted Baillieu warning of “severe economic consequences” for his state.
And how dare Qantas say they cannot survive when they run virtually empty planes in some of their overseas routes. If they are losing money maybe they should cut some of those routes and not fly them at all.
The truth of the matter is that just like BHP walked out on us in Broken Hill, Wollongong and Newcastle, Qantas wants to become a multinational and shaft the lot of us for lucrative overseas trade routes.
Mr Abbott has now put his foot in it by saying:
“Qantas is an essential service. It is the responsibility of government to ensure that essential services operate and that brand Australia is not damaged.
But if it is an essential Australian service then why are we letting them go offshore without blasting them with the threats of massive tariffs or forcing them to pay full taxes?
and further more, now that the Fair Work Act has been enacted then the Unions are stuffed because regardless of what the judge/magistrate orders then “everybody” must follow his ruling … therefore the right to strike for fair conditions has been removed from Australian workers and placed in the hands of someone who only cares about a continuance of services, not conditions.
This will fare bad for the government, I guarantee it .. I’m calling the railway unions on Monday, see if I can convince the present bosses to stop the entire network in support of the workers.
I daren’t think what would happen if we had no airline travel, our economy would slowly grind to a halt.
Did I hear that bob mugabe is going to send a couple of Air Zim planes over to lend a hand?
This is already happening in the USA, offshoring maintenance, needless to say they are beginning to drop out of the sky a bit more often!
I should imagine if the big USA lot are doing it lots of others worldwide are up to the same trick!
I expect the fat cats seei t as acceptable risk and travel by corporate jet!!!
I’m bloody glad I’ve given up flying.
Hope the workers win this for all you antipodean types who still fly!
Christ the bloody world doesn’t get any better does it? Talk about the new age of the robber barons.
What about an Occupy style protest outside Quantas?
In August Qantas announced a it had more than doubled its full-year net profit to $250 million but warned of challenging times ahead as it revamped its loss-making international arm. ( but this is after spending billions on the new A380 air buses)
The airline flies to 208 destinations in 46 countries, operating more than 5,700 flights a week across all its brands domestically and more than 970 international flights. It moved 44.5 million passengers in the year ended June 2011.
And throughout all of this they continue to say they are going broke? Ludicrous, truth of the matter is that they wish to go Multinational for the sake of shareholder’s profit at the expense of Aussie jobs.