Qantas

When is Len Brown going to act and tell his union mates to pull their heads in. The current industrial strife has now seriously crippled financially the viability of the Ports of Auckland of which his council is the 100% owner.

The Maritime Union laughed when Maersk withdrew their $20 million per annum business from POAL. I wonder what they think now that Fonterra has withdrawn their $1.4 billion worth of business from the Port.

If Maersk was a blip in trade then the lose of Fonterra’s business is a disaster. That business will now be flowing into the coffers of Tauranga and Napier.

Couple that with the news before Christmas that Tauranga has now got permission to allow significant dredging to enable ships bigger than the MV Rena to dock and the strategic brilliance of the Maritime Union is looking as good as Napoleon’s for invading Russia in winter.

The Ports of Auckland should withdraw all offers of settlement now and play Qantas style hardball in order to put a halt to the economic sabotage and blackmail that the Maritime Union is playing by. Shut the port, Contract out all the jobs, re-open with the freedom and flexibility of contractors.

It is high time this union nonsense was knocked on the head.

Damien Grant writes in the Herald:

Last month, its CEO, Tony Gibson, wrote an embarrassing article in which he admitted that his primary competitor, the Port of Tauranga, was more efficient, more profitable and that despite paying unskilled dock workers $91,000 a year, he was unable to make them do more than 26 hours of work.

Can you imagine the CEO of Westpac writing in the New Zealand Herald that his staff were less productive than those of BNZ, that they were paid too much and he could not get some of them to put in 40 hours?

Gibson needs to look no further than the example set by Alan Joyce, the CEO of Qantas. When his unions threw a wobbly, he grounded the fleet. Joyce showed courage, stared down the union, took some short-term heat but saved his airline.

It is a very competitive market, both for port business and for labour, something the union fails to recognise.

The Ports of Auckland is owned by Auckland Council, where councillors voted 12 to nine to back the port’s management, with left-wing troglodytes such as Sandra Coney and eight others voting to support the union.

I’m not meaning to be disrespectful (okay, maybe I am) but working on the docks is not skilled employment. Knowing how to remove an appendix is skilled. Moving a container is something someone with basic literacy and functioning limbs can learn over the course of a few weeks.

They are earning $91,000 a year because Parsloe knows a council-owned company does not need to make money and that management will back down from a fight.

A LGOIMA request of emails to and from Sandra Coney and Mike Lee should be very illuminating.

Gibson should sack the entire workforce and start again. At $91,000, there will be no shortage of applicants, even if he has to fly them in.

He will not because his political masters will not let him.

Down in Tauranga, the local council floated 45 per cent of its port’s shares to the public. The business is therefore run along standard commercial lines. Its CEO is winning clients such as Maersk and exploiting the underlying competitive advantage it has over the hapless Jafas.

Government ownership places constraints on a business that produce the sort of nonsense we are seeing at the wharves.

Unions sense weakness and seek advantage, commercial discipline is lost and there is no consequence for failure, no risk of insolvency and no reward for profit.

The state-owned enterprise model is an improvement, but there is no discipline like the discipline of the market.

Gibson should sack the entire workforce and tender out the work. Let’s see how the union fares then.

The Maritime Union is striking again:

Ports of Auckland faces yet another strike – for 48 hours from this morning ((Friday)) – in an increasingly bitter dispute which has already disrupted shipping three times this month.

The strike from 7am by more than 300 dockers covered by the Maritime Union will carry the row over unsettled collective employment negotiations through the first dawn of 2012.

There has been no attempt by either side to break the impasse since the workers at the port’s two container terminals held two 24-hour strikes last weekend, including on Christmas Day, and issued notice of a fifth round of stoppages early next month.

The Port has now offered a 10% pay increase, which in this economic climate is very generous. The Union responded by giving notice of yet another strike, which is now in effect. It is still not clear what the Union actually wants, except to ensure that it retains a total monopoly of stevedoring at the Ports of Auckland.

It is now time to break the strike and break the union at the same time.

One option would be to do what President Reagan did to striking air traffic controllers in the US thirty years ago. Sack the lot of them and employ new people. Unfortunately, John Key is no Reagan and New Zealand doesn’t really have the laws to enable the government to do this in any case.

John Key could promote a law change to have union officials, who act in bad faith, held personally liable for the damage that they cause to others. Bad faith provisions were brought in by Helen Clark’s government but there is currently no real liability associated with bad faith actions.

Perhaps the best route, however, would be for the Ports of Auckland to follow the same path as Qantas did recently. They should simply make all members of the Union redundant and, like Tauranga, and put its stevedoring out for competitive tender by private operators. The Labour politicians in the Auckland Council won’t like it a bit, but will not ultimately have the political courage to stand in the way of management. There will be a period of disruption, no doubt, but as Qantas discovered, that is far preferable to a slow economic death at the hands of self-serving unionists.

The formation of an alternate union also has merit. It seems the Maritime Union is hell bent on destroying the Port and the jobs that go with it. Give them their wish.

The government should also move forthwith to repeal section 55 and section 65A of the Employment Relations Act 2000 that provides for employers to deduct union dues from salary on behalf of unions. This is a very simple adjustment and could very easily be part of an Omnibus Bill.

The hold of the Maritime Union over the Ports of Auckland and the many businesses reliant on trade through the port must be broken.

Last week Labour released their employment policies and front and centre in them was a return to the style of union bully tactics we had in the 70s and 80s. Darien Fenton on launching the policy and strategies told us that their plans would resemble the arrangements that Australia “enjoys”.

I wonder how the public in Australia is enjoying their unions now:

Qantas Airways grounded all of its aircraft around the world indefinitely on Saturday due to ongoing strikes by its workers.

The Australian carrier’s entire fleet of 108 aircraft will remain grounded until unions representing pilots, mechanics and other ground staff reach an agreement with the airline over pay and conditions, Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce told a news conference in Sydney.

“We have decided to ground the Qantas international and domestic fleets immediately,” Joyce said.

Flights already in the air when the announcement was made were to continue to their destinations.

Staff will not be required to show up at work and will not be paid starting Monday, Joyce said.

Joyce said he made the decision early Saturday and then gained the approval of the Qantas board.

The airline had been forced to reduce and reschedule flights for weeks because of a series of strikes and overtime work bans over staff concerns that their jobs are being moved overseas.

As is usual the union shave tried to muscle unreasonable demands from the company and as a result the board has decided that it is cheaper for the company in the longrun to shut down for a period of time rather than continue to suffer ongoing unpredictability from stroppy unions.

The tourism industry has been brought to its knees by unions:

“Now we are facing the uncertainty of this decision, forced by the unwillingness of unions to accept the globally competitive nature of tourism and aviation,” he said.

“The 500,000 people directly employed in Australia’s $94 billion tourism industry do not deserve to have their livelihoods threatened by this, which could be the straw that breaks the camels back.”

This sort of thing is precisely what labour has promised to deliver to us after the generale election should they win. Their opening address clearly signals a return to the cloth cap socialism that dogged this nation in the 70s and 80s. Rampant unionsim that saw projects like the Mangere Bridge stalled for year after year after year through industrial sabotage by the unions.

Qantas has shown us what we can expect if Phil Goff and his band of mediocrity are returned to the treasury benches.

Labour says that it’s employment policy is like Australia’s. So it is a logical conclusion that we will get strikes like Australia.

THE Premier, Barry O’Farrell, and his Victorian counterpart, Ted Baillieu, yesterday wrote to Julia Gillard urging her to use powers under the Fair Work Act to end the Qantas dispute.

In the latest round of industrial action against the airline, about 4000 baggage handlers and other ground crew will hold stopwork meetings today.

The stoppages will mean another day of long delays for passengers at international terminals, following yesterday’s 24-hour strike by customs staff over a pay dispute which both sides confirmed late yesterday was being resolved.

As industrial unrest swept the country, anger over stalled pay negotiations prompted more than 120,000 workers across more than two dozen federal government agencies to deliver a resounding ”no” verdict to 3 per cent pay rises.

At least nine of those agencies are now poised for industrial action or have taken action already, while at the state level more than 90,000 public school teachers will walk off the job for two hours next Wednesday.

via Andrew Bolt

Check out the stupid actions of a union in Australia in imploring people to boycott the company their members rely on for wages:

UNIONS have warned travellers not to buy tickets from Qantas between now and Christmas in a dramatic escalation of a campaign designed to cause maximum disruption to the airline…

“I would think that by October the 28th when the Qantas AGM takes place, you’re likely to see full-day stoppages,” said Steve Purvinas, the federal secretary of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association.

“If I was a person considering travel over the period up until Christmas, I’d probably be looking at airlines other than Qantas,” he said. “If I was a passenger, I wouldn’t be purchasing a ticket with them at this stage.”

As regular readers will know Jetstar are NOT Mates. Jetstar are the worst company in new Zealand for customer service. Last night on Close Up, apart from Mark Sainsbury being one of the world’s worst interviewers and almost letting the CEO get away with it, he finally got the CEO of Jetstar to admit that his apology to two disabled people was not because Jetstar treated them like outcasts, but because they weren’t aware that Jetstar’s policy is to treat them like outcasts.

Where Jetstar failed he said, was that they weren’t told that they would be treated like shit.

The story also plays out in the Dompost this morning.

Jetstar’s treatment of two high-profile disabled campaigners has been condemned as unacceptable by Disability Issues Minister Tariana Turia.

Tanya Black and Dan Buckingham – presenters of TVNZ disability show Attitude – had been due to fly from Auckland to Wellington yesterday morning but were not allowed on to their aircraft after they were told they each needed to fly with their own caregiver.

After an embarrassing standoff of 20 minutes or more, they ditched Jetstar and bought new tickets to Wellington on Air New Zealand.

Jetstar told The Dominion Post it would be apologising, and refunding their fares. It confirmed part of the airline’s concern was about how they might get to the toilet on the hour-long flight.

If their apology is anything like the one given on Close Up last night they should be told to stick it.

So does Trevor Mallard have a “carer” when he flies Air NZ? If so is the taxpayer picking up the tab?

Air Asia X lands in Christchurch and makes some new friends.

Cut-price airline Air Asia X has landed in Christchurch and pledged a six-figure sum to help restore the earthquake-ravaged city’s heritage.

The first flight from Kuala Lumpur landed at Christchurch International Airport just before midnight to applause and cheers from the approximately 300 passengers who were greeted with a Maori powhiri as they disembarked.

At a ceremony at Westfield Riccarton late this morning, the airline announced a percentage of all tickets bought by travellers coming and out of New Zealand will go into a heritage restoration fund to help repair and rebuild many of the city’s iconic heritage buildings hit in February’s earthquake.

Air Asia X chief executive Azran Osman-Rani said the airline had set itself a target of $220,000 and hoped to reach that figure within a year.

”We appreciate all the support we are getting from our guests and hope this financial gesture will assist in some way to restore Christchurch’s heritage icons,” he said.

Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker said the money was another amazing gesture from the company which had shown its commitment to the city even after the devastating earthquake.

Some other airlines were reviewing their services into the and out of the city but Parker said Air Asia X had never once reconsidered its agreement with Christchurch.

Still nothing from Qantas. They must be busy – Pity their CEO doesn’t extend his call to include Christchurch, instead they have abandoned the city. Definitely NOT Mates still.

$15 Million Dollar vote of confidence in the dark days.

Whaleoil’s crack marketing team are impressed that the world class, mass consumer brand Coke has had the smarts to invest in Christchurch. Every time a Kiwi opens up a Coke, particularly in Christchurch, they can take pride. Smart marketing byseizing the opportunity to great long term support for Coke in the South Island.

Ironic it is a $15 million dollar investment, in contrast to the Qantas losers who have incompetently lost $15 million dollars since the earthquake.  The damage to the Qantas brand has been in the tens of millions of dollars in New Zealand. If only the Board had heeded Whaleoil’s free advice.

Coke launch today had extensive free media coverage, stories on the lead news bulletin. The Prime Minister was on the news, downing a Coke.

As a pure media stunt the value was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Meanwhile mean nasty old Qantas has yet to put its hand in its pocket. Not Mates.