Qantas Dispute
BACKGROUND
This paper aims at analyzing the industrial dispute between Qantas and the trade unions in 2011. The key questions include: _(1) WHAT WERE THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE QANTAS DISPUTE IN 2011? (2) WHAT DOES IT ILLUSTRATE ABOUT CHANGING INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS IN AUSTRALIA?_
To address the question (1), there is an analysis of the interviews and documentary evidence to explain the causes and consequences of the Qantas dispute. To the question (2), it applies theories of industrial relation to the Qantas case in order to give a clearer sense of the lived reality of the transition in industrial relation in Australia.
For the first area, the paper reveals the causes of the Qantas dispute which can be classified as both economic …show more content…
(1991) stated that "the most visible effect of the strike on the employer is the loss of production, loss of output, inability to meet customer 's demand, inability to supply custom orders on schedule, loss of profits, and many others." Paarsch (1990) suggested that"during the dispute, the company has to maintain production at close to its previous level by redeploying staff, hiring casual or contract labour, and/or increasing the overtime of employees not directly involved in the dispute. As such changes will increase the company 's operating costs, through for example, overtime pay, hiring costs and administrative costs, there will be a decline in profit share for a given level of production…Alternatively, the company is not able to continue to supply output during the dispute and in response may run down inventories to meet its obligations" In the case of Qantas, strikes and refusals to work overtime led to reduced and altered flight schedules affecting Qantas ' performance. (Sheehan, 2011) Prior to the lock-out, the airline had to redeploy its employees and hired casual staff to replace the employees involved in the dispute. Series of strikes and service disruptions culminated in industrial action from the unions caused Qantas decided to lock out all employees involved in the dispute and ground its entire fleet in October, 2011. (Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, 2011) The fleet cost Qantas $68 million in net …show more content…
The traditional conciliation and arbitration system was highly collectivist.
It could not have operated without unions and employer associations as respective
collective representative organizations (Higgins, 1968: 15; Frazer, 1995:
54), and this collectivism permeated all aspects of the system. Awards, as a set of rules of the employment relationship, were not only deeply collectivist in themselves,
but also served to encourage collectivism in other rule-making processes;
in other words, awards in the traditional system were both instruments of
collectivism and instruments for collectivism.
While it was always possible for the enforcement of award provisions to be
achieved by informal action at workplace level, it is usually argued that individual
enforcement was difficult because employees were reluctant to raise such
matters, at least until there had been some dispute leading to the end of the
employment relationship (Lee, 2006: 46-47). More commonly, informal
This paper aims at analyzing the industrial dispute between Qantas and the trade unions in 2011. The key questions include: _(1) WHAT WERE THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE QANTAS DISPUTE IN 2011? (2) WHAT DOES IT ILLUSTRATE ABOUT CHANGING INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS IN AUSTRALIA?_
To address the question (1), there is an analysis of the interviews and documentary evidence to explain the causes and consequences of the Qantas dispute. To the question (2), it applies theories of industrial relation to the Qantas case in order to give a clearer sense of the lived reality of the transition in industrial relation in Australia.
For the first area, the paper reveals the causes of the Qantas dispute which can be classified as both economic …show more content…
(1991) stated that "the most visible effect of the strike on the employer is the loss of production, loss of output, inability to meet customer 's demand, inability to supply custom orders on schedule, loss of profits, and many others." Paarsch (1990) suggested that"during the dispute, the company has to maintain production at close to its previous level by redeploying staff, hiring casual or contract labour, and/or increasing the overtime of employees not directly involved in the dispute. As such changes will increase the company 's operating costs, through for example, overtime pay, hiring costs and administrative costs, there will be a decline in profit share for a given level of production…Alternatively, the company is not able to continue to supply output during the dispute and in response may run down inventories to meet its obligations" In the case of Qantas, strikes and refusals to work overtime led to reduced and altered flight schedules affecting Qantas ' performance. (Sheehan, 2011) Prior to the lock-out, the airline had to redeploy its employees and hired casual staff to replace the employees involved in the dispute. Series of strikes and service disruptions culminated in industrial action from the unions caused Qantas decided to lock out all employees involved in the dispute and ground its entire fleet in October, 2011. (Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, 2011) The fleet cost Qantas $68 million in net …show more content…
The traditional conciliation and arbitration system was highly collectivist.
It could not have operated without unions and employer associations as respective
collective representative organizations (Higgins, 1968: 15; Frazer, 1995:
54), and this collectivism permeated all aspects of the system. Awards, as a set of rules of the employment relationship, were not only deeply collectivist in themselves,
but also served to encourage collectivism in other rule-making processes;
in other words, awards in the traditional system were both instruments of
collectivism and instruments for collectivism.
While it was always possible for the enforcement of award provisions to be
achieved by informal action at workplace level, it is usually argued that individual
enforcement was difficult because employees were reluctant to raise such
matters, at least until there had been some dispute leading to the end of the
employment relationship (Lee, 2006: 46-47). More commonly, informal