By Peter Milne
On Wednesday, pilots flying Qantas planes within WA will start a six-day strike, twice as long as expected after notice of an added three days was given to Qantas late on Tuesday afternoon.
Who will be affected by the pilots’ strike?
Qantas’ WA subsidiary, Network Aviation, flies scheduled passenger routes within WA and provides charter flights to ferry mine workers to and from home.
Qantas will use three Qantas Boeing 737 aircraft and charter aircraft from other airlines to move people about WA during the strike, the company said in a statement announcing the extension of the industrial action to the end of Monday.
The airline expects more than 80 per cent of its customers will travel the same day they were booked to travel in the first two days of the strike when about 25 return flights a day will be cancelled.
Qantas will contact affected passengers directly and offer fee-free changes or refunds to those who want to change their plans.
The airline is planning how to manage the other days and is finalising longer-term arrangements if the action is extended again.
How will WA’s distant mines cope with a reduced lifeline to Perth?
When the strike was thought to be three days it was understood that about 3000 workers for the state’s biggest iron ore miner, Rio Tinto, would be impacted by changes in flight times and destinations, but the miner did not expect operations to be disrupted.
Those numbers extrapolated over WA’s other big miners and now for six days is likely to result in the travel plans of more than 10,000 people being affected.
Qantas had to cancel 35 return flights during a one-day strike last Thursday when 95 per cent of its regular customers and 70 per cent of charter customers were moved to different flights on the day. That performance will be difficult to match over six days.
What are Qantas and the pilots arguing about?
The Qantas pilots in WA have not had a pay increase since 2019. They have voted down two packages put to them and had a one-day strike in October before recommending industrial action with a 24-hour stoppage last week.
Qantas says it has offered a 25 per cent pay increase, but the union’s response is this only applies to its lowest-paid members and only gets them a few per cent above the award that would apply without an enterprise bargaining agreement.
There are also disputes about rostering, with the unions having seven unmet demands.
The pilot’s union claims it wants its WA-based Qantas members to have the same pay and conditions as Qantas pilots elsewhere in the country.
The airline argues its WA business is very different with a mid-week bump in activity as mines change swings.
Are they close to a deal?
Not if you listened to Australian Federation of Air Pilots senior industrial officer Chris Aikens talking to Radio 6PR’s Ollie Peterson on Tuesday afternoon.
“They’re acting like an arrogant intransigent bunch of employers, and we just can’t take it,” he said of Qantas.
Aiken was referring to conditions Qantas had agreed to but then took off the negotiating table.
Later Network Aviation chief operating officer Trevor Worgan said in a statement the strike was aimed directly at WA’s economy by targeting fly-in fly-out mine workers.
“We’ve been working to reach a new agreement for 18 months and want our pilots to start receiving pay increases of more than 25 per cent that we have offered.
“We’ve been clear that we cannot offer more.”
How long will the strikes go on for?
Who knows? It is a battle of wills.
All but seven of the 210 pilots who voted on taking protected industrial action in September supported the option of “an unlimited number of single or consecutive 24-hour stoppages of all work.”
On Monday, Qantas went to the Fair Work Commission to ask for the negotiations to be declared intractable. Aiken said the process would likely take a few weeks. If the Commission agrees with Qantas, industrial action would have to stop, leaving the independent umpire to determine the outcome.
In the meantime, the pilots and Qantas may both be comfortable losing more days of pay or revenue, but the disruption could cost the big miners much more, putting pressure on their transport provider.
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