Qantas accused of shifting engineering jobs from Australia to US

In January, two senior ministers officiated over a ceremony that may involve moving more highly skilled jobs offshore.

Steve Ciobo, left, Julie Bishop, Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce and LA Mayor Eric Garcetti open the airline’s new hangar at LA airport.

In January this year, two of the Turnbull government’s most senior ministers officiated over a ceremony in Los Angeles that may involve moving more highly skilled Australian jobs offshore.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Trade Minister Steve Ciobo flew to Los Angeles airport and cut the ribbon on a sprawling maintenance hangar designed to service Qantas’s big aeroplanes.

After shutting down its heavy maintenance in Sydney, Melbourne and Avalon over the past decade, Qantas will have the ­capacity to service A380s, 747s and the incoming 787 Dreamliner at the $US30 million ($40m) state-of-the-art facility.

While Qantas has been doing heavy maintenance in LAX since 2005, the new facility is 50 per cent larger than the previous hangar and can service four of these big planes at the same time.

Qantas has said the new facility would allow it to bid for work on other carriers’ aircraft, but it is hard to escape the conclusion that this investment means moving more maintenance offshore.

While Qantas does more of its maintenance in Australia than its competitors, the intense cost pressures in the industry are driving the pursuit of low servicing costs.

But the engineers’ association warned that the strategy was compromising Qantas’s unique selling point as the world’s safest airline. It claimed staff at LAX were less quali­fied than in Australia and they were signing off on maintenance work that was far greater than the hours they work.

Qantas would not say exactly how much maintenance was still done at facilities in Brisbane and Tamworth, but it said the “vast majority” was still done here.

A Virgin Australia spokesman said while the airline employed hundreds of engineers to maintain its aircraft in Australia, “heavy airframe maintenance and overhaul works (are) carried out at specialist facilities overseas”.

A Regional Express spokeswoman said all engines and gearboxes, including propeller shafts, were maintained and overhauled by General Electric-approved ­facilities in Britain. Rex employs 175 ­engineers and 15 apprentices to maintain its Saab 340 fleet.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, who flies extensively in a light plane with her chief of staff James Ashby, who is a qualified pilot, has taken an interest in what the ­industry is doing for jobs in Australia.

Senator Hanson has been speaking at length with leading ­industry bodies and key figures such as Dick Smith about the ­issues affecting Australian jobs.

A spokesman for Senator Hanson said Australia had the skills to service big planes like the A380 and he questioned why Qantas had moved these jobs offshore.

Senator Hanson is also concerned about the declining number of  pilots and the impact of Civil Aviation Safety Authority red tape on the industry.

The spokesman cited the case of how a tear in the ­upholstery of a plane would have to be repaired by a CASA-certified business.

He confirmed that One Nation was working on an aviation policy that would be released soon.

“We expect to release a policy in the next four weeks,” he said.

Steve Purvinas, federal secretary of the Australian ­Licensed Aircraft Engineers’ ­Association, said Qantas’s drive offshore, and Virgin’s decision to carry out all heavy maintenance overseas, had had a massive impact on the jobs of Australian engineers and other technicians.

He said Qantas’s decision to close the three facilities had cost 2500 jobs, while another 500 jobs had gone in line maintenance. He claimed the airline was gambling with its envious safety record.

“Qantas no longer wants Australia to be its home and instead sees the airline’s first class safety record as a commodity they can gamble with to increase executive bonuses,” he said. He claimed planes came back from overseas servicing with faults that needed to be rectified. He said there was as example of this in January involving a 747-400.

He also produced documents that showed how two engineers at the Qantas LAX operation logged 50 hours of work over a 10-hour shift, and another one did 170 hours over a 13-hour shift.

“The LAX workforce runs on a shoestring budget where aircraft safety is not even taken into ­account. The LAX engineers regularly lodge reports for excessive workloads and insufficient labour but nothing is ever done to fix the problem,” Mr Purvinas said.

He also warned of “latent faults” that only emerge when the planes are in the air.

But a Qantas spokesman said the work at LAX was carried out to the highest standard and was ­approved by CASA.

“All maintenance is done to the highest Qantas standards no matter where the work is carried out,” the spokesman said. “We have had arrangements in place for many years for certain maintenance to be completed overseas. Los Angeles is a major hub for Qantas and maintenance work on Qantas airplanes in Los Angeles is carried out in a Qantas facility ­approved by CASA.”

Mr Purvinas said he was ­appalled when the two ministers opened the LAX hangar as it followed a serious act of bad faith by Qantas management in negotiations over the servicing of the 787 Dreamliner.

Qantas invited ALAEA last year to join talks over the 787 on the premise that the maintenance could be based in Australia in order to seek concessions.

“After several months we found out that the decision to base this work in their new LAX hangar had been made 12 months earlier, making their phony consultation process nothing more than a box-ticking exercise,” Mr Purvinas said.

He warned that the decision to base 787 maintenance at LAX was “shortsighted and risky”. He said the LAX workforce had 80 engineers and only one in five of them held a licence to work on aircraft.

“Half of the remaining 60 would have less experience than the average Australian apprentice. A similar workforce in Australia would have two-thirds of the engineers licensed and the others with an average 20 years’ experience.”

A Qantas spokesman initially said the “majority” of maintenance and engineering was undertaken in Australia, and then corrected this to “vast majority” when asked what this meant. While he declined to provide a specific percentage, he said “there are no plans to change this”.

“We are the only Australian airline to conduct heavy maintenance in the country and (we) ­employ more than 3000 people in our ­engineering and maintenance division,” he said in a written ­response. “Our replacement hangar in Los Angeles provides us with a fit for purpose space to complete tasks on our A380 and 747 fleet. The facility’s more efficient design means we’re able to reduce the time it takes to complete tasks by giving engineers easier access to aircraft.”

Qantas has argued that the LAX hangar made the airline more ­efficient because its flying schedule meant Qantas could have up to four aircraft on the ground in LA for up to 10 hours at a time, so it made sense for some ­engineering tasks to be completed at LAX. Qantas operates 40 flights each week to LAX.

The previous hangar, which was built at the start of the jet era in 1958, was not big enough to ­accommodate an A380 under cover. This meant that in the event of bad weather, some tasks on the plane’s tail could not be carried out, which affected the schedule.

A spokeswoman for Ms Bishop said she was in Los Angeles for the G’Day USA program and this was why she officiated at the hangar launch. She said Qantas’s commercial decisions were a matter for the airline.

“Qantas has a global presence and its commercial operational decisions are a matter for Qantas,” the spokeswoman said.

“Qantas is a founding member of the G’Day USA program and the minister attended the event at the invitation of Qantas. The launch coincided with the minister’s attendance at the annual G’Day USA program.”

Mr Ciobo said “Qantas has ­advised there are no job losses as a ­result of the hangar. In fact, it is generating services exports for Qantas.”