Where trade unionists start their day on the net.
Dear Labour Start supporter
Air NZ CEO Rob Fyfe is responding to your emails with a form letter in which he states that the Service and Food Workers Union represents “a minority of members” at Air NZ. In fact, we represent the majority of check-in staff at Auckland International airport, the biggest airport in New Zealand. It is at this airport and among our members that the multi-national outsource provider, Swissport, claims it can do the job with 18% fewer staff and a 25% cut in our members’ pay.
Along with the Engineering, Packaging and Manufacturing Union, our union has been engaged in discussions with Air NZ since May 2006 to try to find a “competitive in-house solution” to keep ground-handling services in-house. But the unions’ proposal, which included $9 million in productivity gains, was rejected outright by Air NZ as it did not give them the cuts in penal rates and allowances that they wanted. The company also demanded “flexibility” in rosters and new pay scales based on “clusters of skills” with ranges of rates, rather than the automatic, incremental progression we now have.
The deadline set by the Employment Court for finding a mediated alternative proposal to keep services in-house was 26 January. Our union engaged with Air NZ right up till that date, a 9-month period that saw our team of delegates in talks with the employer for months on end. During this time, we produced three submissions that involved hours of research, deliberation and preparation.
At the end of all this “engagement”, the company presented an all-or-nothing package that was completely unacceptable to our members. Since then, the EPMU has continued to engage with the employer in a confidential process. We asked Rob Fyfe to show us his so-called “blueprint” that he has talked about in the media because our members want to know what it is, but he refuses to give us any details. We suspect it is nothing more than the package of four demands that the company put up in January.
It is important to note that our Collective Employment Agreement is still in force. We have offered to go into negotiations to discuss issues such as roster patterns as soon as bargaining is initiated in three months time. Under New Zealand labour law, workers cannot take industrial action while their CEA is still in force. We have information that Air NZ deliberately planned to put up the outsourcing plan during the term of the Agreement when our members could not go on strike. Thus it is our strong belief that the outsourcing threat was a cynical ploy to bring the unions to their knees and offer up concessions to keep the workers’ jobs in-house.
This is part of a pattern by Air NZ that started with heavy engineering, then aircraft cleaning, then finance, and now ground-handling. Air crew think they could be the next target. On and on till Air NZ is nothing but a virtual airline with a few highly paid managers managing outsource provider contracts.
Our union’s position has always been that the only way to stop the outsourcing is to call on the huge public support for our publicly-owned airline. We are asking ordinary people to call on the Government to exercise its right as the majority shareholder to get its Government-appointed Board members to control the current ideologically-driven management.
We do not think this struggle will be won in confidential talks with Air NZ management, nor in the law Courts. We, the people, own Air NZ. It is up to us to act now to support the workers and to maintain the integrity of our national airline.
Yours in solidarity
Jill Ovens
Northern Regional Secretary
SFWU Nga Ringa Tota
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