Qantas long-haul cabin crew vote yet to new deal to avoid pay cuts

Qantas international cabin crew have voted in favour of a new work agreement, ending a bitter dispute.

Qantas international cabin crew have voted in favour of a new pay deal.

Qantas cabin crew have voted in favour of a new work agreement after being threatened with severe cuts to pay and conditions if they did not support it.

The long-haul flight attendants were given a second chance to back the deal after almost 98 per cent voted against the offer late last year.

In response to the overwhelming rejection, Qantas applied to the Fair Work Commission to terminate cabin crews’ current agreement and shift them to the “modern award” at significantly lower pay rates. After further talks with the Flight Attendants Association of Australia resulting in minor tweaks to the offer, another ballot was held, with 85 per cent of cabin crew voting yes.

A Qantas spokesman said the outcome brought much-needed certainty for the airline and cabin crew as it rebuilt international ­operations.

“Once approved by the Fair Work Commission, the agreement will ensure we have the ­operational flexibility to respond to the post-Covid operating environment,” the spokesman said.

“In addition to removing restrictive and outdated rostering processes, the agreement includes a 6 per cent pay rise over the life of the agreement and higher allowances for our crew.”

He said there was still work to do to rebuild demand and navigate border uncertainty in many overseas destinations.

“We’re expecting to be flying at 45 per cent of our pre-Covid ­capacity by the middle of the year and continue to look at new destinations to get more of our aircraft and people back in the air as we rebuild our network,’’ he said.

The main features of the new agreement were changes to rostering, to allow crews to work on more than one aircraft type.

FAAA national secretary Teri O’Toole said the result for members was not ideal given their choice was “bad or worse”.

“The gun was at their heads,” Ms O’Toole said.

“We couldn’t risk them being forced on to the modern award, and needed crew to make their own decisions for their own circumstances.”

She said the experience showed why there needed to be a change to EBA termination laws that left employees with no bargaining power.

“Industrial relations laws are too heavily weighted against workers,” Ms O’Toole said. “When a huge company that has been supported by the government and the taxpaying public can do this and use the laws in this way, no worker is safe.”

The turnout for the second ballot was considerably lower than that for the first, with 1866 votes received, compared to 2336 in the December ballot.

Ms O’Toole said that was no surprise.

“They couldn’t bring themselves to vote for this, but couldn’t afford to say no,” she said.

Qantas employs about 2500 cabin crew for its long-haul operations, which are operated by A380s, A330s and Boeing 787 ­aircraft.

The majority of those flight ­attendants returned to work only in December after having had no work since late March 2020.