Friday, March 10, 2006
Qantas off-shore the wrong jobs
Qantas – hardly a truer symbol of Australian pride, the airline with an unsurpassed air safety record, a tradition of quality service and reliability – is 'off-shoring' its maintenance department to China, in the process it is firing around 300 engineers in Sydney.

This will save the airline 10-15% on its maintenance bill. Chinese workers labour for far less than Australian counterparts.

Qantas's management argues such a move is essential in the competitive world of the airline industry. The savings can be passed on to the consumer through cheaper fares.

'Outrageous!', say the unions, shock-jocks and local MPs.

But I bet the consumer will say "so what" and chose the cheapest flight, no matter. Loyalty to the flag? Forget it!

Loyalty to Australian workers? Also soon forgotten, despite the bluster on the phone-ins.

Every other industry has faced up to being off-shored, why should maintenance engineers be different?

Is safety compromised by this move? Well, it might be, but we will reserve full judgement. Suffice to say that Qantas has the best safety record for any airline, Air China has the worst.

Michael Pascoe of www.crikey.com.au - as usual – cuts to the chase. He argues, why stop at the maintenance engineers? The owners of Qantas (the shareholders) should be demanding more out-sourcing.

Viz: In 2004, Qantas CEO, Geoff Dixon, earned $6.1 in salary, bonuses and other benefits. In contrast, Cathay Pacific boss, Philip Chen, made just A$1.6; Singapore Airlines chief, Chew Choon Seng, probably less than this.

So off-shoring the CEO's job will give our 'national carrier' a much better return: a saving of 281%!

Not surprisingly, the Qantas management has not recommended this to the Board of Directors.

Industry groups consistently argue that business needs to pay top dollar to attract the best talent to this country to head-up our industry. We are just not paying rich people enough to motivate them to move here.

Industry groups and conservative governments consistently argue unemployment benefits and wages are too high. We are simply giving poor people too much money to motivate them to earn more or come off benefit.

So there you have it, the rich aren’t paid enough and the poor are paid too much.

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