The Write Stuff: Three strikes, you're out

Chris Harrison | October 15th, 2011

t’s rare that industrial action attracts passengers to an airline. Most of the time it makes them head for the competition.

But Jetstar staff’s inventive No Weigh Day, which is seeing check in personnel refuse to charge for excess baggage, makes me wish I’d booked my upcoming flight to Sydney with the low-cost airline.

I could have taken my coffee machine, my surfboard, my bed... In fact, a friend of mine is soon moving to Melbourne. Perhaps he could cancel the removalists.

Strike action used to be about stopping work. It appears we are moving into new and interesting territory with this dereliction of duty approach to industrial action.

Qantas engineers recently worked with only their left hands. I’m assuming they were left-handed to begin with, or ambidextrous. And my editor recently made me work through my lunch hour, so next week I’m going to type this column with my nose.

Thanks to this novel approach by Jetstar staff, which is the first industrial action ever taken against the airline, for a short time only you can check in, safe in the knowledge that you won’t hear those pesky words: "I’m sorry but your bags are overweight." Or, if you do hear those pesky words, they will be followed by a shrug of the shoulders by the person who uttered them.

This will reportedly cost the budget carrier an estimated $50,000 a day, but at least – just once – passengers won’t have to worry about whether or not to take that extra pair of shoes.

It’s just the one pair of shoes for me, however, because I didn’t book with Jetstar. And despite being a loyal and long-term Qantas frequent flyer, I also avoided our national
carrier.

For the first time, I booked with Virgin Australia because more conventional industrial action at the flying kangaroo has seen me react in the conventional manner and hop on over to the competition.

I had no choice. Not only could booking with Qantas see my flight disrupted, or perhaps even cancelled, it could also make me look a fool. In what is surely the kindest, if not craziest thing I have ever done, I am taking my Italian mother-in-law to Sydney to see the sights.

This is the same woman who has spent the past few years listening to me bang on about the never-ending strikes in Italy while also suggesting, incorrectly it now appears, that this kind of thing doesn’t happen with such frequency in more rational countries.

The Italians have mastered the strike. During my time in that litigious country I saw everyone from bus drivers to Formula One commentators down tools, or down microphones as the case may be. (Watching a Formula One race without a commentator is almost as monotonous as watching one with a commentator.)

Italian postmen also stopped worked apparently, although nobody noticed the difference. But I never went on strike with my criticism; criticism which, like my mother-in-law, has now come back to haunt me.

Fortunately, however, the motive for my move to Virgin Australia is lost on her. She doesn’t speak English and can’t understand what’s in the news. Though I have to admit even I’m starting to struggle.

I’m not sure who I believe – Qantas management or Qantas staff.

Management claims it is losing millions on its international operations and needs to focus on short-haul opportunities in Asia – the
airline equivalent of the mining boom.

Starting up a new low-cost airline based there, rumoured to be called RedQ, would give Qantas the opportunity to fly around several loop-the-loop holes and tap into the local labour market, significantly reducing its cost base.

Not surprisingly, this has upset both left and right-handed workers in Australia, particularly long-haul pilots, who have the most to lose. The catchphrase for their cause has become ‘a Qantas pilot for a Qantas flight’. But with RedQ, or whatever the Qantas Group end up calling the upstart… sorry… the start-up airline, it wouldn’t be a Qantas flight.

But is Qantas International losing money, or as much money as it claims it’s losing? According to my favourite flying mag, Australian Aviation, independent senator Nick Xenophon suggests that Qantas is subsidising Jetstar with Qantas profits to make it look as though its low-cost airline is flying high while its main international operation is
a burden, thus justifying its focus
on Asia.

It’s all getting a bit turbulent.

Xenophon said Qantas’ claims that its international operations were losing money required "forensic examination".

Alan Joyce said if you believe that then there’s a good chance Elvis is not only alive and well but he’s working in a McDonald’s in Manly.

The Qantas pilots’ union think Qantas management is the real Hamburglar and have hired a consultancy firm to pore over Qantas’ financial reports.

Then there are the death threats. Management say they’ve received them. Unions say they know nothing about them.

And somewhere in all this there’s the spirit of Australia. But I never saw it this bad in Italy.

Regardless of who’s telling the truth, the bad news for Qantas is that I am flying to Sydney with Virgin Australia, and paying excess baggage for my mother-in-law.