Qantas denies Easter travel threatened

31 Mar 2010, 6:34 pm   -   Source: AAP
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Qantas has brushed aside industrial action by engineers as a scare tactic, saying work bans won't hurt operations or the Easter travel plans of passengers.

Qantas has brushed aside industrial action by professional engineers as a scare tactic, saying work bans won't hurt operations or the Easter travel plans of passengers.

At meetings on Wednesday, members of the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers Australia (APESMA) voted to extend overtime bans through the four-day break beginning on Friday.

The union, representing Qantas and Jetstar professional engineers, said it could not guarantee flights would run to schedule over Easter and apologised to travellers in advance of any possible delays.

But Qantas group executive of government and corporate affairs David Epstein said the union industrial action, which he said had been ongoing since late 2009, had not affected services.

"It has continually tried to undermine passenger confidence in Qantas, including before the Christmas and New Year holidays in 2009," Mr Epstein said on Wednesday.

"On each occasion, its claims that our customers' travel plans would be disrupted have proved incorrect."

Union members voted to endorse a series of work bans due to concerns about the overnight and weekend assignment of Qantas managers to cover the positions of specialist senior professional engineers.

"We want to apologise in advance to the travelling public if delays occur, but Qantas managers have forced this situation by failing to manage its workforce," APESMA senior industrial officer Alison Rose said on Wednesday.

About 190 professional engineers service the entire Qantas fleet and part of the Jetstar fleet.

The Qantas group has a total engineering workforce of 5700 and said it had contingency plans in place to cover for any union action.

"It is disappointing that APESMA continues to use these scare tactics against Qantas," Mr Epstein said.

But Ms Rose said another concern was that the substitute managers had little or no experience with Qantas' fleet of double decker superjumbo Airbus A380 aircraft.

"The A380 has a common, recurring problem of faulty fuel gauges and the managers have no experience with that type of aircraft and picking up on that potentially dangerous issue," she said in a statement.

Ms Rose said the problem had been ongoing for months.

The union has written to the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) about its concerns, asking for a independent investigation into the claims.

"Qantas continues to bring in inexperienced workers to cover the roles of our specialist senior professional members," Ms Rose said.

"Instead of negotiating to end the dispute, Qantas has been using a team of managers to cover day-to-day engineering supervisions out of these times."

Qantas said any suggestion that safety would be compromised was "untrue and irresponsible".

Qantas has previously said the threat of delays due to the industrial action was "hollow" because professional engineers do not work at weekends or public holidays.

It also said the "real issue" in the dispute was a union push for pay rises of 18 per cent over three years.

The APESMA meetings were held at Sydney's Mascot and Tullamarine in Melbourne on Wednesday.

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