Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Qantas. Part eleventy billion.


The latest addition to the Qantas fleet.

I know I don’t expect much from the Canberra Gallery these days. But I would have hoped that even the dimmest hack’s reaction to repeated claims from the Opposition about the crisis at Qantas that “the Government should have stepped in earlier” would have been to ask “ummm… why?”

The dispute, before the management of the airline grounded the entire fucking Qantas fleet, was grinding slowly towards a resolution- as the industrial umpire Fair Work Australia has already noted.

Nor was there any wide-scale disruption to the travelling public, until management’s little dummy-spit.

Qantas management grounded the fleet. The Government went to Fair Work Australia, who ordered management to un-ground it*.

Which they did.

I fail to see the problem.

My boss at the union where I worked as an organiser had a saying, along the lines of “every industrial dispute gets resolved eventually”.

This was happening in Qantas. For the Opposition to now claim that the Government should intervene in an industrial dispute because of…stuff… suggests their grasp of industrial reality on the ground is somewhat less than through.

* They also ordered the unions to suspend their industrial action. Which I rather suspect was the whole point of this caper**.

** I also rather suspect this is akin to trimming your toenails with a shotgun, but I’m not the one being paid the big bucks.

7 comments:

Melba said...

I wonder if the Qantas CEO was hoping that the public would hate on the unions over his action.

Mistake I would think. Everyone was hating on Qantas and him. A good friend works for them as cabin crew.
I have never heard him swear so much and be so aggressive as he was towards Joyce a few days ago.

BTW, do you still think Kevin is not gonna go for PM? I don't read much to do with politics these days in the papers, I avoid it like the plague, but even so, I'm seeing snippets and it seems I'm not the only one who thinks he's going to. Or is that just the press/other pollies pushing an agenda?

Ramon Insertnamehere said...

BTW, do you still think Kevin is not gonna go for PM?

Yup.

Mr E said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I think the most colourful theory I've heard is that Joyce is some sort of corporate mole whose goal is to bring Qantas down from within.

On Rudd, as far as I know, Windsor, Oakeshot and Wilkie have all said that they'll pull their support if there's a leadership change, so even if he did have the numbers within Labor, I don't see how he could make a move before the next election.

And on a related note, does anyone know of any media sources that specialise in deep policy analysis rather than just political speculation? Things have finally gone too far, even for me.

Mr E said...

I have never heard him swear so much and be so aggressive as he was towards Joyce a few days ago.

Can't say that I'd blame him,
by Day 3 of trying to read "Ulysses",
I was ready to deck the cunt as well.

Melba said...

You did well to persist for three days, Mr E. I couldn't get past about three pages any time I tried.

Mr E said...

I couldn't get past about three pages any time I tried.

Nor did I.