Qantas and industrial conditions in the air

In 1982, sparked by the MV Amoco Cadiz disaster, the PMOU or Paris Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control was brought into effect upon the agreement of fourteen European nations. Flying the Liberian flag, the MV Amoco Cadiz had sunk, causing major environmental damage. It was time for the ‘flag of convenience’ regime to be called to account. The PMOU now comprises 27 ‘participating maritime Administrations’, extending over ‘the European coastal States and the North Atlantic basin from North America to Europe’. The PMOU lists its mission as being ‘to eliminate the operation of sub-standard ships through a harmonized system of port State control’, with annual inspections numbering over 24,000, ensuring that ships ‘meet international safety, security and environmental standards, and that crew members have adequate living and working conditions’.

The problem in the airline industry is not that airlines are operating under ‘false’ registration, flying flags of convenience. However, by being incorporated in countries not of their origin, as with JetStar (assumed by many to be an Australian airline, wholly located in and operating out of Australia), or being located in a country of origin having lesser industrial standards, airlines avoid Australia’s industrial regime. For some, it is deliberate circumvention. For others, it is happenstance: their home-base countries do not sustain industrial relations in terms Australians take for granted. Worker conditions do not or do not necessarily conform to those supported by Australian workplace principles and practices.

Thus, foreign-owned airlines are able to undercut Qantas, promoting a climate where Qantas management asserts the airline can be profitable only if it resists union and worker claims for wage rises and improved industrial conditions – and if this resistance proves untenable in Australia, remove its operations elsewhere.

How to challenge this?

Rather than conform to the ideology of lowering workplace standards and conditions of work, pay, health and safety in Australia and endorse these poor standards and conditions elsewhere, why not adopt a policy promoting their maintenance in Australia and their upgrading around the world? Why not require adherence to Australian industrial standards by any airline transporting passengers to and from Australia?

Would requiring airline companies to conform to Australian industrial standards in their employment of aircraft staff, pilots, flight attendants, and ground staff located in Australia including mechanics, clerks, and managers, lead to a withdrawal of airline companies from the Australian market? Not so.

If the market is sufficiently lucrative for them to challenge Qantas’ former supremacy, it is hardly likely that foreign-owned airlines will withdraw because Australian law requires them to pay their staff at levels deemed fair, or obliges them to incorporate Australian health and safety standards into their operations, or expects them to adopt Australian industrial conditions in their operations generally. If some do withdraw, this will not harm the travelling public, for safety standards are a protection not only for workers, but for travellers, too. And boutique or vanity companies will continue to operate in the Australian market: these airlines have aimed attention solidly at the U.K-Australia flight path, providing travellers entre throughout the world.

Australia is signatory to United Nations and International Labour Organisation (ILO) treaties and agreements. These set industrial and worker standards and rights, and employer standards and responsibilities. Their aim is to ensure that in Australia and around the world employees and employers conform to standards protecting worker safety and wellbeing and promoting industrial peace and harmony. These treaties and agreements recognise that employers do not have a right to exploit workers or make profits at the expense of fair industrial conditions. Australia can implement these treaties and agreements within its own boundaries, and in so doing ensure that where foreign corporations come onto Australia’s runways and into Australia’s airports, these treaties and agreements do not fall by the wayside but apply equally to those entities’ employees and operations.

The Task Force on ASEAN Migrant Workers points out that ASEAN countries, such as Singapore and Vietnam, where JetStar has established its operations, have registered reservations to U.N. and/or ILO standards, or have not ratified them. Vietnam ranks as ‘one of the worst’ in ASEAN for ILO Core Conventions ratifications, while Singapore is one of those emphasised as failing to implement Core Conventions.

The time has surely come for the Australian government to live-up to its own industrial relations policy and its international commitments, making it possible for Qantas to remain an Australian company based on Australian soil. Qantas ought not be allowed to become an empty shell, its planes registered elsewhere and wearing tailfins bearing kangaroos no longer legitimately able to fly skywards to the tune of  ‘I still call Australia home’.