Labour relations

Elsewhere we report on the extraordinary war of words between Virgin Blue and the secretary of the ALAEA (Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association) which erupted after a problem with a wheel on a VB 737. The ALAEA used the incident to ramp up its campaign against VB maintenance procedure changes, while the airline in turn made statements about threatening legal action regarding the ALAEA’s “seriously inaccurate statements”.

Then there is Boeing’s decision to start a second assembly line for the 787 in South Carolina. Setting up the production line looks in large part to have been driven by a desire to use non-union labour, given the crippling disputes and strikes Boeing has endured with its Seattle workforce in recent times. Those strikes and the move to South Carolina certainly make a mockery of the ‘Working Together’ tagline Boeing once proudly used to promote the development philosophy of the 777 program. The context of ‘working together’ then was slightly different – more about how Boeing worked with its suppliers and airline customers – but the intent was certainly to have different parties working together for a common goal.

That of course is the fundamental disconnect between management and unions. Companies are there to serve their shareholders’ interests (ie a cost effective workforce), unions their members’ (ie better pay and conditions), and finding a happy middle ground will always have the potential to be problematic.

The challenge for both aviation executives and union leaderships is the need to find better ways of ‘working together’. A happy workforce is a productive workforce, and as Greg Russell told AA, often it is not just about the money.

But providing a great place to work seems much harder than even the painful process of to-ing and fro-ing between management and unions about a percentage point here and there of pay increases.

A News Website

Our all-new website is now online at australianaviation. com. au.

For some years now our Australian Aviation Express emailed newsletter has been very popular for its detailed aviation news coverage each week. But now, with the new website, we’ve taken our news reporting one, very big, step forward, with daily news.

Since late October we have been publishing breaking aviation news daily on our website, with a greater depth and breadth of aviation coverage than any other Australian website. Plus archived news articles are fully searchable, and you can subscribe to our ‘RSS’ news feed.

Then there is our new ‘e‑commerce’ shop section of our website (many thanks to our IT guru Marc Degacz for his great development work), and separately we have launched a page on the Facebook social networking website.

Take a look and give us your feedback.

Seasons greetings !

The team at AA wishes all our readers, writers and photographers, advertisers and suppliers a Merry Christmas and a safe and prosperous New Year. Thanks for your support. n