Conservative commentators on the Qantas grounding are playing loose with the truth.
In grounding the entire domestic and international Qantas fleet last month, the firm’s chief executive, Alan Joyce, claimed the action was the only way to stop the unions’ industrial campaign. The implication was that grounding the planes was the only way to have Fair Work Australia (FWA) intervene and order a stop to all industrial action.
In the weeks since, a number of anti-union ”cold war” industrial relations warriors, including Peter Reith, Chris Corrigan, economist Judith Sloan and coalition politicians, have thrown themselves into the debate, questioning the efficacy of the Labor government’s Fair Work Act. The common theme is that the grounding of the Qantas fleet demonstrated the weakness of the act, because the company had no other way to get FWA to order a cessation of all industrial action other than by grounding its entire fleet. This is patently untrue.
To understand the massive hoax being played on the Australian community by both Qantas management and numerous conservative commentators, it is necessary to distinguish between Joyce’s notice of an intention to lock out his employees from 8pm on Monday, October 31, and his grounding of the entire Qantas fleet two days before that date. Of these two steps, only the first was ”protected” industrial action. There was no need for the grounding of the Qantas fleet to have FWA order a stop to all industrial action. Simply announcing in advance that a lockout was to occur would have been sufficient to invite FWA to issue orders stopping all industrial action.
Under section 424(1) of the Fair Work Act, “FWA must make an order suspending or terminating protected industrial action that . . . is threatened, impending or probable” where it is likely ”to cause significant damage to the Australian economy or an important part of it”. In other words, the industrial action did not need to occur, but rather it only had to be “threatened, impending or probable”.
Let’s be clear here. Qantas only had to announce its intention to initiate a planned lockout of its employees to invite FWA to suspend or terminate all industrial action. Once convinced of the impending damage to the economy, FWA had no discretion under the act other than to suspend or terminate protected industrial action. So the claim that Qantas had no option but to lock out its employees in order to get all industrial action stopped is nonsense. But there is more subterfuge by Qantas management here.
Having announced on Saturday afternoon that a lockout was to be enforced as of Monday at 8pm, why did Qantas ground its entire fleet on the Saturday, before FWA could possibly hold a hearing and stop all industrial action? Why indeed?
The explanation offered by Joyce was that ”individual reactions to this lockout decision may be unpredictable . . . for this reason, as a precautionary measure, we have decided to ground the Qantas international and domestic fleet immediately”. Qantas grounded its fleet because it apparently had no faith in the professionalism of its own pilots and ground staff.
If Qantas management genuinely thought that the worry, stress and distractions to their pilots caused by the impending lockout could jeopardise passenger safety, then presumably management’s current plans for outsourcing and staff cuts would equally pose a safety risk.
Following the logic of Qantas’ ”risk assessment”, it should ground all its flights until the company’s planned restructuring is fully completed.
In the hearing before FWA, there was no indication from members of the full bench that they agreed with Joyce’s odd rationale. In any case, FWA was concerned with preventing the airline’s planned lockout of its staff. Ultimately, the Fair Work Act worked smoothly, with FWA holding a full bench hearing and then ordering a stop to Qantas’ planned lockout. In the end, there was no lockout and not a single worker lost a day’s pay.
So, what does this episode tell us about Qantas and the current state of industrial relations in Australia? It exposes a senior management team willing to trash its own company’s brand, cause irreparable harm to the Australian economy as well as inconvenience its customers for stated reasons that defy logic.
It is worth noting that FWA found that the unions’ industrial campaign had not caused significant economic harm, as Qantas pilots had not taken any strike action, instead restricting their campaign to making in-flight announcements airing their grievances to passengers. The only factor causing significant economic damage was management’s grounding of the fleet.
There was nothing about the events of that weekend that call into question the efficacy of the Fair Work Act. Ultimately, the government intervened when it received notification of the Qantas decision and a full-bench hearing of FWA took place, leading to the termination of all industrial action, well in advance of the planned commencement of the lockout. By any measure, the Fair Work Act came out smelling of roses. Qantas, on the other hand, has a rather different odour about it.
Bruce Hearn Mackinnon is a senior lecturer in human resource management at Deakin University.
This was originally posted by The Age at the following URL http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/facts-fly-under-the-radar-20111116-1nj57.html#ixzz1dvfff3nt
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