Qantas divide strikes a global note

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.