“Love him or hate him, Alan Joyce has had people the world over sit up and take notice’.

So did my beloved Duce.

...The author just “Nailed It”! Comments quoted from “Malaysian Insider” readers are edifying:

1. — both MAS and AirAsia — had made their staff take a pay cut and you don’t see the staff picketing and going on strike now, do you?”

2. Wrote one reader: “One of the problems causing the financial crisis in the West is the presence of a strong union movement. At a time when millions are dying to have jobs, Qantas employees, reputedly some of the best paid in the industry, have decided to strike.”

...Both these quotes are indicative of Australian attitudes which highlight the commonly believed fallacy of Free Market Globalism, which offers itself as the offended party in all disputes: Particularly disputes which conflict with national sovereignty of the workers rights. The Globilised free market system has failed: This is the real lesson from the Qantas dispute.

...With E.G.$680 trillion held by banks and hedge funds, in OTC derivatives, unregulated with little or no record of who owns what(risk), global markets are a sham! What hope for the future of National sovereignty? The game is over for the Free Market to reign supreme over all facets of production, for the shareholder profit alone: The lights are on; world-wide, the workers are onto it!

rolling strikes, dissatisfied workers and finally the grounding of the fleet by Qantas CEO. Surely the dismantling of workchoices was going to stop all this. Another massive Labour failure and again the public being fooled by an incompetent Government. Bring on the election.

This is the most competitive high tech industry on the planet.They work on a cost of 8-12 cents per km per passenger.Out of that 8 cents per km,they have to make a profit.Fill a cab in Sydney with 4 passengers and travel 50 km to the air port it would cost 35 cents per km per passenger.Air travel is 4 times more efficient than travelling by a full taxi.

Qantas employees have the lowest resignation rates of any industry outside the public service.The banking industry on the other hand which produces nothing of tangible worth,makes enormous profits on a shrinking economy.How is this so?

Yes Arjay, yet workers and unions just put all this aside simply because they feel they deserve a pay rise.

With margins as low as this industry has, just a simple increase of one cent per litre for jet fuel could turn that perceived huge profit into a loss.

People just have to come to terms with the fact that times hae changed a, thatnthe good times are over. If the boss is doing it tough, these hard times must be shared.

You see the likes of Qantas staff simply see perks like 75% off air travel as thier given right, yet, when introduced, it was the companies way of saying, thanks.

And you are so right with the banks.

It's as though they simply don't exist in governments eyes.

They make these huge profits, using our money and charging us for the privilege, yet the government chooses to tax the miners instead, who, unlike th banks, take huge risks.

Perhaps it's their ability to close shop, by closing branches, reducing services, increasing fees and outsourcing thier mainly IT work to the likes of India.

Let's face it, our governmentS can't even make them pass on the full interest cuts from the RBA.

I just owner how long they can continue to travel under the radar.

Ps, I use capital S in the word governments in the hope my fan club can see I am referring to all governments. They just love to hate me.

Of course the absurdity of the left-wing position of 'labour versus capital' is that they claim that employment is intrinsically exploitative, but then cry when the employers go elsewhere. It's intellectually infantile.

As for the global divide between rich and poor, the only thing that can be done about that is to provide for everyone as best we know how, and as best we know how means by free markets, because that is the only way the decision-making of the rich can be made totally subject to the decisions of the masses, in their capacity as consumers. The author is right. If equality is desirable, why only half-measures for the most spoilt people? Why not full equality, and destroy the world's economy and human society with it?

The reason a CEO's pay is greater than a worker's is because the price of their wages is set by the evaluations of everyone in the world who uses money, by their actions in buying or abstaining from buying this or that. And they value the work of successful CEOs more than that of an ordinary worker, for the obvious reason that people who know how to run a big business are rarer than people who know how to repair engines or cook meals. If they don't, the business goes broke, and that is as it should be, thus giving the cooks and mechanics their opportunity to go into successful competition if they think they can.

The only alternative to free marketis servitude to demagogues: political favours paid for with public money, and handed out to whatever corporations and banks the government wants to favour (sound familiar?).

Just because free markets undermine government sovereignty doesn't mean free markets have failed. It means everyone prefers freedom to serfdom.

Government only ever gets a look-in because:
"Government is the great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else."
Bastiat

Alan Joyce, what has this bloke ever achieved at Qantas to justify a 71% pay hike. As a CEO he's done nothing. Has no idea when it comes to industrial relations. Qantas needs leadership which Joyce is not supplying. The conservatives have their own political agenda and like to blame the Labor Government for Qantas but the whole thing has been badly handled by Joyce and the Qantas management from the start.

Joyce had something else up his sleeve, but did not work out. He was not expecting to have to negotiate with the unions, so achieved nothing. 21 days or it goes to arbitration.

Peter Hume:

...Essentially, the free movement of capital (Globalisation), encouraged as a remedy for dwindling profits, clashes with national sovereignty through social conflict, as workers struggle to maintain acceptable wages and conditions inside organisations prepared to pull out of Australia and plunder the less organised labour-force in third world economies. This is the highlight of the Qantas dispute!

...I don’t personally see that Qantas can be “blamed” for following a well-worn path to profits, by tagging along the same trail. However, unions likewise, cannot be “blamed” for attempting to haul in dwindling wages and conditions with industrial action against employers to achieve the self-same aim.

...The obvious problem is the conflict of interest between employer (Capital) and employee (Labour) where labour turns in the only direction available, Government, to force a consensus and insist on regulation (over capital) through tariffs, as one example, which encourage capital to remain in the social confines the Nation.

...The issues around the Qantas dispute, (global free markets), give Gillard the golden opportunity to deal effectively with the important issue of retention of Industry and jobs, and will win “brownie Points” prior to the next election, if she appears to be effectively on side with the National work-force” (read votes)