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Qantas divide strikes a global note

By K.C. Boey - posted Tuesday, 8 November 2011


Love him or hate him, Alan Joyce has had people the world over sit up and take notice. Who would have thought the chief executive of a middling public-listed company in Australia would have caused such a stir.

Among inconvenienced business travellers and holidaymakers booked with Qantas stranded mid-flight from Los Angeles to London, Singapore and Australia, few would have had a good word for the man who unilaterally grounded the entire global fleet of Australia’s national carrier in reaction to union demands.

At The Malaysian Insider news portal, few events outside of Malaysian preoccupation with domestic affairs drew as much comment as Joyce standing up to union muscle.

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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.”

This isn’t quite correct. Various unions representing sections of employees, including pilots, had embarked on varying degrees of industrial action. It was Joyce, in fact, who unilaterally took “strike action”, locking out Qantas’s entire staff rather than endure “death by a thousand cuts”.

The Insider commentator went on: “The management made the right decision to cease all operation…Public anger should be directed at union members, not the management.”

Commented another Insider reader: “The management has a huge task managing an airline with what little resources they have, and here you have a bunch of spoilt Qantas employees demanding better pay and benefits.

“Qantas employees, if you are reading this, kindly research how much other airline companies in other countries are paying their staff. You can start with Malaysia Airlines and (Malaysia-based) AirAsia: look at how much their cabin crews are being paid, and also what are their benefits (or the lack of benefits). Only then would you truly be thankful for what you have. 
“They — 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?”

There were decided thumbs down for the reader in support of “victory to the…workers’ union. May they win against the CAPITALISTS”.

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Unwittingly AirAsia chief Tony Fernandes had forced Joyce’s hand. It has to be said, though, that neither Joyce nor Fernandes must in all good conscience have had in mind the bearing the business models of their respective airlines would have in sharpening clarity in understanding the transforming global workforce.

This at a time when the global population just ticked over into seven billion: when half of that seething humanity — from the emerging nations — are aspiring to the comforts of the advanced other; and for two months now we have had the anger of the “99 per cent have-nots” spilling on to global streets and parks inspired by the “Occupy Wall Street” protests against the “1 per cent haves”.

Not that Joyce and Fernandes would concern themselves with such global stats and events much beyond what they represent as market prospects, and what proportion of the market each can corner for their airlines. Their motive is to maximise profit; their sole responsibility to their respective boards and shareholders.

Just a day before Joyce took the bold step in Qantas, shareholders had agreed to increase his pay package by 71 per cent to A$5 million (RM16.1 million).

Insidercommentators have a point when raising the disparity in pay and benefits between Qantas workers and those of MAS and AirAsia: it shouldn’t surprise us that the disparity between Joyce and Fernandes at the managerial level could be of the same order.

But why stop at distinguishing between management and labour in any one environment? Why not apply the same arguments on unequal distribution at every level of our global village?

Commentators in advanced economies pontificate no end about injustices in the growing gap between rich and poor within “hierarchical” emerging nations compared with the “flatter”, more egalitarian, societies of the richer economies.

Where they fail is to take the argument to its logical conclusion: to see the distribution of global resources to the worldwide ranking of nations, where the gap between rich and poor is growing no less exponentially.

The Qantas dispute now in government regulator-mandated negotiation — with aircraft now back in the air — centres more on job security than on pay and benefits. Workers are demanding that management guarantees security of tenure in the airline’s battle to stay competitive against low-cost Asian carriers.

Of which budget AirAsia and its subsequent international offshoot AirAsia X loom large. Other competitors include new kids off the Middle Eastern block in full-service Emirates and Etihad. Three days after Joyce grounded Qantas, Singapore Airlines’ fully owned budget medium- and long-haul Scoot announced its “quirky attitude” arrival.

Joyce offered such intensification of competition as one of his arguments against the union demands. The other was advances in aircraft and avionics technology; he could no longer justify guaranteeing continued employment for workers whose jobs technology had made redundant.

Joyce’s arguments are not peculiar to the aviation industry. Nor are they particular to Australia. They are as much evident to most industries in a converging world. Convergence has its consequent effect on global labour, with the injection of the 3.5 billion workforce from an emerging world.

Management as much as labour in advanced economies will do well to acknowledge this reality and find ways to accommodate richer and poorer in today’s world order.

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About the Author

K.C. Boey is a former editor of Malaysian Business and The Malay Mail. He now writes for The Malaysian Insider out of Melbourne.

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