Listening to the public discourse of this dispute, I hear a Qantas management that is determined to trample the unions; a management that hasn't learned from the pilots' dispute 20 years ago [or the Patricks dispute]; a management that thinks it's OK to offshore jobs; a management that thinks it's OK to undermine work and conditions with its secondary minimal service companies; one that's arrogant enough to award itself while denying the people who actually keep the airline flying. It's a management that has no respect for its workforce and their representatives, one whose ideology is the primacy of managerial prerogative over inclusiveness [the lost corporate memory of forward-thinking managers further down the line who gave baggage handlers their heads in saving the airline millions of dollars by designing an efficient system of loading aircraft]; a management that probably lost some time ago the strong employee loyalty that the airlines once enjoyed and never understood.

There are a number of inescapable truths in this article. Unfortunately, the really important bits are entirely unrelated to the author's target - the unions - but instead illuminate the key issue, which is Qantas' consistently poor management, over many years.

"The reality... is that the international arm of Qantas is close to a basket case and has been for years."

Ummmm, right. So the answer is to absolve management from any responsibility in creating this "basket case", and instead find ways to i) protect management's jobs by outsourcing as much as possible and ii) force the unions into a corner, so you can blame them for everything.

The author pretends a little even-handedness.

"Qantas haven't been perfect through this process. They made a glaringly amateur tactical error in their campaign by awarding a significant pay increase to their Chief Executive Alan Joyce"

And that's the only thing they got wrong? Oh, please...

What about the long string of wrong decisions on their fleet mix, and its impact - in both the short and long term - on maintenance costs? Not to mention the Board's decision to order early-life models from both Airbus and Boeing, which is always a risky strategy (as proven in this case by the A380 scare, and the long delays to the Dreamliner), but in this case compounded by the fact that they had no fallback e.g. the deployment of 777s, which have performed brilliantly for Qantas' competitor airlines.

Much as I dislike the tactics employed by the unions in this case, which seem designed to maximise the impact on passengers, their complaints that the company has carried a huge overhead of incompetent managers for so many years, deserve a wider hearing.

The announced restructuring is simply a way in which attention can be drawn away from management's serial blundering. It's the oldest trick in the book, beloved of con-men everywhere - "look, over there..."

If Qantas ends up in the hands of an overseas company - which seems the only possible logical outcome - then it is management that should be pilloried, not the unions.

Wait a minute, this is the same author who was arguing not three days ago that 'if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys'. Apparently a bad thing in the parliament, but just fine when it comes aeroplanes.

Acolyte Rizia your tenuous link of two entirely different subjects is poorly considered.

It is ridiculous to imply that my argument that we should be paying our most senior politicans market-competitive salaries, in any way discounts the validity of my view that Qantas have the right to run their business as they see fit: keeping in mind they already pay their staff more more than jetstar, virgin and tiger.

Nice try, but that's a particularly long bow you're drawing there.

Pericles, you are quite correct in one way. Yup, lots of poor
management decisions were made at Qantas. The place used to be
Govt owned after all, some of the old Govt dept methods of doing
things, would have remained for a while.

But you would also have to concede that good management is about
dealing with the here and now and a plan for the future, not about
crying over spilt milk.

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Qantas-IR-Jetstar-union-airlines-Virgin-Fair-Work-pd20111014-MLULR?OpenDocument&src=sph

This is an interesting take on the dispute, with some of the
historical information required, to understand it a little better.

Daniel,

I concur. But if better wages and working conditions equates to better workers - the essential thesis of your peanuts and monkeys argument - how can unions negotiating for better wages/conditions be regarded as a bad thing? Unless, of course, you just don't like unions.

Need I really point out that unions have just as much right as Qantas to conduct their business as they see fit, within the bounds of the law?