Have wages and working conditions gone backwards?

In November 2020, I wrote an article in the Australian Aviation magazine titled ‘Tired, stressed, and underpaid: Is this aviation’s ‘new normal’?’. At that time, I spoke with ex-airline workers and unions about the state of working conditions and pay packets for those the frontline aviation workers that continued to work since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and what we might expect to see as airlines continue to navigate through, and ultimately, out the other side of COVID-19.

At the crux of it, I found that frontline aviation workers, including pilots, cabin crew and ground services, had seen their pay and conditions take a beating since March 2020, as the airlines attempted desperately to rein in their cash burn while keeping essential operations afloat. Many workers faced many months of stand downs, while some took the opportunity to leave the industry altogether through voluntary redundancies. 

Those that were able to work did so at severely reduced monthly hours, worked longer shifts and received fewer allowances. Their job descriptions expanded to include additional cleaning and sanitising, as well as enforcing federal face mask mandates and changing border control measures. They did so all while facing unprecedented abuse from passengers over their attempt to enforce such policies, and putting themselves at risk of contracting COVID-19 in the days long before vaccines were available – and all while maintaining the same stringent safety measures that are always front of mind in aviation.

It’s not hugely surprising that these burdens fell onto frontline workers – as it did for workers across many industries. The world changed essentially overnight, and airlines were left with little option but to stand down workers in their thousands, and ask those that remained to do more work for less, for the sake of the businesses’ survival.

In the 2020 article, unions unanimously exclaimed that while they, and the workers they advocate for, were happy to make short-term concessions to help aid the airlines out of the COVID downturn and keep things running, they were not willing to agree to long-term decisions that would result in irreversible damages to the working conditions, and ultimately wellbeing, of aviation workers.

In the months since that article was published, news headlines have been filled with bad news for aviation workers. Qantas made the decision to outsource its ground services operations, making another 2,500 workers involuntarily redundant and permanently reducing Qantas’ in-house workforce. These skilled workers were then forced to take on roles at third-party companies for less pay, poorer conditions and fewer guaranteed hours than they had under Qantas.

At Virgin, enterprise agreement negotiations with unions became additionally turbulent following the announcement of then-CEO Paul Scurrah’s departure, and his replacement by Jayne Hrdlicka. Negotiations went further south after the Fair Work Commission became involved, before a deal was finally struck – notably only after Virgin threatened to terminate the enterprise agreement altogether, which would send all staff back to modern award wages and eliminate years of bargained pay and condition perks. Qantas later went ahead and used this tactic most recently with its international cabin crew, after EBA negotiations reached a stalemate, applying to see the enterprise agreement thrown out rather than sit back down at the negotiation table. The move will see some of its long-standing international cabin crew take wage cuts of up to 60 per cent.

Given how things appear to have (unfortunately) played out, I thought now is as good a time as ever to sit back down with the people on the front line, and see if our 2020 fears were in fact grounded in reality. Has COVID really caused long-term damage to the conditions of aviation workers? 

Signs point to yes

Speaking with a current Virgin Australia cabin crew member of more than a decade – who wished to remain anonymous for this article – there appears to be a lot of stress and anxiety through the industry about current working conditions, which have started to take a longer-term hit following recent enterprise agreement negotiations. 

“When Virgin Australia went into voluntary administration, we saw our enterprise agreement conditions go through a bit of a battery,” he says. “At the time of negotiations, we were able to see a lot of the damage mitigated, but ultimately, we are now working a little bit more for a little bit less, and that gap has widened. We know we are lucky that Virgin survived and are grateful for a job, but at the same time, we don’t want to throw our conditions out the window. Our workload has increased due to COVID, but our enterprise agreement conditions have gone backwards somewhat, which is disappointing to see.”

The cabin crew member explained that frontline aviation workers, be that on the ground or in the air, have had to quickly become the leading body responsible for enforcing COVID safety rules and mandates on their passengers, including wearing face masks at all times, as well as meeting vaccination and testing entry requirements for their destination. 

“We are constantly telling customers to put their masks on if they’re not eating or drinking, and these are people who are stressed out too with what’s happening in the world so tensions are high. Sometimes unfortunately the rules for entering a state change mid-flight, and we bear the brunt of that frustration. So, we hear a lot about aggression toward staff on flights,” he says.

This crew member is not alone, with frontline workers around the globe reporting increased aggression from the travelling public. “I know of some bad examples where crew have had to call police to meet the aircraft because of aggression,” he says. “I think the stress of everything has accumulated and it just takes one little thing I think to tick people off these days because everyone has just reached the end of their tether.” 

In addition to this, workers are now also responsible for higher standards of sanitisation required to operate in the COVID environment, but crew aren’t given any additional time or allowances to do so. 

Meanwhile, differing COVID strategies have seen Australian states and territories take different stances on what exactly defines a close contact, and perhaps more importantly, whether or not Australian air crew need to test and/or isolate after flights. 

“At times you’ll be in Queensland one night and Perth the next, and different states have different rules that can change constantly. Often we have to undergo either PCR or rapid antigen testing regularly, depending on what route we do. But if we need to do a PCR, then we have to isolate, generally in hotels, and this is something we don’t get paid for,” he says. 

The crew member says sometimes his precious days off are therefore dedicated to getting PCR tested, simply in order to fulfil his work responsibilities to layover in a certain state.

As I touched on previously, Virgin cabin crew signed a new enterprise agreement in April 2021, after being threatened to have their agreement thrown out entirely – a move which would send their wages, allowances, and conditions back decades. This agreement resulted in their overnight allowance slashed from around $120 per night for overnight layovers to just $40 – barely enough money to cover the cost of one Uber Eats meal to your isolation hotel room.

Our anonymous current crew member adds: “So all of these are just additional stressors and extra workload for us, be that on the job or in our spare time, that we never had before. It impacts our rest breaks, our time off, and we’re ultimately working more for less.” He also notes that workers are currently growing increasingly worried that these new duties are now a permanent fixture of their roles.

Uncertainty you can count on

On top of all of these new responsibilities, frontline workers have seen their rosters become increasingly volatile. Initially, ever-changing domestic border rules meant that many workers spent months on end stood down from their roles. However, with Virgin and Qantas reinstating all remaining workers back to their roles by December 2021, the Omicron outbreak added a whole new complexity to the mix, and ultimately, more uncertainty for airline workers.

Virgin announced in January that it would slash its flight capacity by 25 per cent through January and February, while Qantas revealed just days later that it would chop its flight schedule down by 30 per cent through to the end of March. The airlines said the cuts were necessary due to the Omicron outbreak, which saw both passengers and crew alike suddenly unable to make their flights, due to COVID-19 and close contact isolation rules. 

“I’ve seen a lot of crew have parts of their roster just wiped because those flights just get canceled and so they get put on a reserve,” the Virgin cabin crew member says. Meanwhile, John Lyons, president of Virgin’s pilot association VIPA, tells Australian Aviation, “I think it’s fair to say workers are experiencing a lot of roster disruption due to the enormous number of cancellations and variations in the flying program and that’s causing a certain amount of angst because that affects their income.” 

“The reality is that aviation workers have been to hell and back over the last two years,” Nick McIntosh, national assistant secretary for the Transport Workers Union, adds. “They’ve constantly undergone this cycle of being stood down for periods of time, partially coming back, then being stood down again. And now, they’re seeing their shifts constantly changing as different restrictions come in and out. It all just adds to the uncertainty of when you can work, and for how long.” 

The Virgin Australia crew member goes on to explain that Omicron has essentially sent an entire workforce into somewhat of a permanent standby. These workers need to work to earn their wages, but now have little say in when they will get the opportunity to actually board a flight. “That makes having a solid work-life balance nearly impossible, because you don’t know where you’re going to be and you can get as little as two hours’ notice before you’re needed on a flight,” he says. 

PPE: It’s undeniable that the industry has changed dramatically from what it was in January of 2020. International travel – and, by proxy, aviation – was largely considered to be the initial major contributor to the global spread of COVID-19, and countries around the globe quickly moved to shut down their international borders. 

And yet, many people still needed to fly. This resulted in airlines swiftly introducing a slew of new protocols onboard to help travellers feel more at ease while travelling, including the use personal protective equipment (PPE), increased sanitisation, and social distancing onboard.

Emirates was one of the first global airlines in April 2020 to announce that its staff would now don full PPE, including a face mask, face shield, gloves, and gown, onboard all its flights.

In recent EBA negotiations across both Qantas and Virgin, reserve time has been a particular sticking point on both sides, as the airlines push for increased standbys, and workers share their frustration over the uncertainty that brings them, and ultimately the damage it does to their work-life balance. Remember here that for pilots and cabin crew, being on reserve means you could end up in a different state for a day or two, with as little as two hours’ notice to get your affairs in order. 

“That’s especially hard for people with commitments such as children, or second employment – which many of us need to have now, because we just don’t know if or when things will improve at the airlines,” the cabin crew member says. 

McIntosh adds, “We really need airlines to sit down with the workforce and work out in the post-pandemic world, how to create secure jobs that meet the needs of the business but also consider that these are real human beings with lives and families that are being affected here. In most cases, the pay is not even the thing that’s on most people’s mind. First and foremost, it’s really about wanting a secure job and wanting some sort of certainty about when it is you’re going to work.”

I think it is deeply important to note that across the board, every person I spoke to for this article told me that morale in the industry is now at a record low for airline workers, given all that has just been discussed. John Lyons of VIPA says, “I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that morale amongst crew, both cabin crew and the pilots, has never been lower than it is today.” 

Lyons adds that thousands of hours of flying experience left the industry when both Virgin and Qantas downsized their workforces throughout 2020, and despite having the opportunity to return to aviation, many are choosing not to in light of current operating conditions. 

“Many of Virgin’s most senior pilots moved from the 737 to the widebody fleet, so when the widebody fleets were made redundant, Virgin lost about 20,000 years of experience collectively, and how do you replace that? Today only some of them have returned to the industry, but not all,” he says.

According to ex-Virgin Australia cabin crew member of many years Shaun Fuller, whom I spoke with in great length for the previous article, there are an increasing number of crew that chose not to take voluntary redundancies when they had the chance and now regret that decision. 

“There are a lot of crew that I speak to that didn’t take voluntary redundancy because they wanted to see out their jobs because they love their jobs and they love what they do. But they now feel like they’ve taken a risk, and so many of them have told me that it’s just not workable anymore,” Fuller says. “The only ones that say it is workable, are the ones that only work part time, and whose lives are set up to support that.” 

Meanwhile, our anonymous current Virgin cabin crew member says, “I have never, ever seen morale this low in my years at this airline, and I’m sure it’s the same at all airlines … I think one of the biggest issues for us right now is that we still can’t really see the light at the end of the tunnel. We don’t know when this is going to end and I think that’s a big mental strain.”

He adds, “We joke in the crew that one positive thing about us having to wear face masks, apart from stopping the spread, is also that it can hide our faces when we’re mentally and physically exhausted from all of these changes, and all of this work and uncertainty.”

So, is this truly the new normal for aviation?

The unions say these factors are all symptoms of a bigger problem, that could well and truly be the exact type of long-term change in the industry that they hoped to avoid, back in November 2020. As noted previously, a number of enterprise agreements have been renegotiated in the last two years since the pandemic started. According to VIPA, for Virgin pilots, EBA negotiations completed during the turbulent COVID period saw pilots approve a deal that promised them fewer flying hours per month, and placed pilots onto a ‘credit-based’ system that pays them only for hours flown, as opposed to a base salary. At the time, the deal reassured pilots that no one in their cohort would be made involuntarily redundant, and that hourly rates would increase over the coming two years. According to Lyons, the deal marked the beginning of what he called the “casualisation” of the pilot workforce. 

“In the last two years of the pandemic – though airlines were eyeing this even before COVID – we’ve gone from industry that, say 10 or 15 years ago, was a good secure job with stable hours, to an industry that is filled with insecure jobs,” McIntosh adds. “So many casuals that are not guaranteed any hours, part timers that are only guaranteed 20 hours, schedules that are just constantly chopping and changing, it’s a completely different operating environment.” 

Unfortunately, this is a practice that is becoming more and more common in Australia’s post-COVID airline industry, as it greatly benefits the airline’s bottom line – which means it could become quite difficult to get things back the way they should be.

There are a number of key issues with airline workers seeing their jobs become casualised, the first of which is that insecure work will change workers’ ability to have a lifelong career in aviation. Workers are promised fewer guaranteed flight hours, and offered additional reserve time where you might need to pick up a sector “at the drop of a hat”, McIntosh says. This makes maintaining the job and a healthy work-life balance exponentially more difficult for crew, especially those with children, pets, or other caring responsibilities. 

CASUALISATION

Australia has already started to see some repercussions of a casualised workforce on the aviation sector.

On 21 June 2021, a Qantas 787-9 diverted back to Sydney shortly after take-off when the flight crew realised they could not raise the aircraft’s landing gear. An ATSB report later found that two

of the 787’s gear downlock pins, which keep the landing gear in place during maintenance and towing, had not been removed by ground crew.

The ATSB stated that a “restructure” in Qantas’ ground crew off the back of COVID-19 standdowns and redundancies meant that only one crew member responsible for towing and performing the pre-flight procedures on this aircraft had ever worked on a Boeing 787 aircraft before.

The safety investigator stated that only one of the Qantas ground crew that it spoke to advised they were aware that a 787 contained five gear pins, as opposed to three, which are often found in smaller aircraft such as Boeing 737s. While all of the other ground crew were found to have experience, none had previously worked specifically on a Boeing 787.

McIntosh says, “If you can only attract people who can work odd hours, and are able to change their lifestyles very quickly, then we’re only going to get a certain subset of people capable of working in this industry. It might be people that are going through university, or people who only see it as a part-time job and not as a life-long career, or people who don’t have other commitments, like families, that rely on them back home. People just cannot stay in industry for years and years if their rosters keep chopping and changing, as their lives change and evolve. So ultimately, you get inexperienced people that keep coming in and out of the industry, like a revolving door, and we go from an industry where people say that they want this as a career, to a very transient workforce.”

This issue plays into an arguably larger, and far more concerning one. Aviation workers are highly skilled individuals, who go through rigorous and tailored training, due to the fact that on any given day, this small handful of flight crew and cabin crew become responsible for the safety of hundreds of passengers. To date, workers have also been notoriously passionate about flying and fulfilling their jobs. However, as already noted, perhaps passion is no longer enough, when highly skilled aviation workers are already opting to leave the industry as opposed to returning to it in its current state.

Further, a “transient” workforce as McIntosh calls it means that the industry is going to struggle to retain workers with experience, and consistently require brand new workers with no flying experience at all. “The key problem is now, first and foremost, about safety,” McIntosh says. “We’re dealing with an industry where if a little thing goes wrong somewhere, there can be catastrophic consequences to that error. If you’ve got bags not loaded correctly on an aircraft, or machinery not being operated properly, or if cabin crew have not been trained properly to resuscitate somebody in an emergency, these are all dangers of a casualised workforce.”

“It seems inevitable that corners are going to be cut, where people don’t know what they’re doing, and they’re going to be asked to do extremely important jobs,” McIntosh says. “That really creates dangers in this industry where you don’t want anything to ever go wrong, and the amount of industry experience that has already left aviation over the last two years, I struggle to see how we will really be able to replace that.” 

He adds: “All workers really want is some sort of certainty and security in the jobs that they’re doing, because they’re doing vital jobs that need to be done to keep aircraft flying.”

Lyons says that in aviation, safety is the most important thing, and by shifting people away from guaranteed work and salaries, workers are put in a difficult position in order to boost their income. “The bottom line with pilots and crew is that it’s all about safety. And when you’ve now got people that are dependent on flying X number of hours to determine their income, they’re prone to go to work when they shouldn’t go to work. They’ll fly when they shouldn’t fly because they’re tired, fatigued or sick. And that has the potential to impact safety standards.”

The larger implication of these tactics is that once this becomes standard operations for one airline, it will essentially need to be adopted by them all. This is made especially complicated by the fact that Australia entered this pandemic with two major domestic airline groups and is now set to exit the pandemic with four – thanks to the domestic expansion of Rex Airlines, and the impending entrance of newcomer Bonza.

“The unfortunate thing is that if this continues, we’re going to inevitably see a race to the bottom across the industry in terms of workers’ wages and conditions,” McIntosh says. “Because if say Qantas – the biggest gorilla in the room – says we’re going to put people to work on wages as low as we are legally allowed, that’s going to boost their bottom line, well how can anyone else compete if they don’t start following the same track?”

I’d like to add here that both Qantas and Virgin were contacted for comment, and did not respond.

Where do we go from here?

In the 2020 article, I discussed a few “outside the box” ways of tackling the people versus profit problem, many of which involved airlines taking a radically different stance on the value they give to their workers. In that article, it was already glaringly obvious that workers were willing to give up a lot in the short term in order to see the airlines survive, but the pendulum hasn’t seemed to swing back just yet.

Shaun Fuller, who spent many years in the industry as a cabin crew leader, says, “Generally, when it comes to customer-facing jobs at an airline, the majority of the staff love their job, and are willing to do a lot to make it work. It’s just a real shame that there’s not a lot of focus on trying to make sure that you are able to motivate and engage your staff because they’re the only things that are going to get the airline through this pandemic. The way Virgin Blue operated back in the day was based on Richard Branson’s philosophy that if I look after my staff, the staff will in turn look after the customer, and the end product will be better overall. It’s really a no-brainer.”

According to VIPA, two years on from the beginning of the pandemic, tired and underappreciated crew are beginning to lose their patience. “I think it’s very important to point out that virgin staff, particularly the pilots, have traditionally been very loyal and very proud of the airline,” Lyons says. “But that loyalty and pride is disappearing.” 

He says for pilots the solution is really a simple one, but airlines need to get on board. “We need to return to a professional salary base remuneration package, which is not dependent on hours flown, because airlines have too many ways of operating in order to reduce the number of hours they can actually use pilots, and artificially lower their income,” says Lyons. “So that’s hugely important”. He also says that “improved efficiency in rostering” is key, alongside efficient utilisation of aircraft. 

The TWU appears to believe that leaving it to the airlines is only going to result in a race to the bottom when it comes to wages and conditions, which means that ultimately the government is going to need to step in and take charge. 

“We’ve got a real problem here that really needs a government to actually come in and adopt an aviation industry plan, because if we just leave it to these management teams that are just working to get their agenda across the line, we’re going to see this industry in an even worse place than it is today,” McIntosh says.

“We need some sort of tribunal that has the capacity to come into this industry and deal with some of the fundamental problems – the monopolistic power of airports, airlines operating as if they can do whatever they want – a body that can deal with those sort of structural issues and also start setting some standards across the entire industry so that we don’t have this race to the bottom in terms of workers conditions, which is what we’re seeing now. So, unless there is real government intervention that is actually there for working people, not just to pump in $100 billion of taxpayer money so executives can keep their large base salaries, we are in real trouble.”

Regardless of what the ultimate solution is, I made a promise to frontline aviation workers, who have remained the backbone of the aviation industry throughout the pandemic period, at the end of my last article that I think is worth repeating here. “Ultimately, while we cannot

say for sure what the industry will look like in the months and years ahead, hopefully you can all rest easy knowing that between your commitment to the job you love, the unrelenting work of your unions, and your friends here at Australian Aviation – you’re going to be OK.” 

And I stand by that.