Stuff the Accord! Pay Up! by Liz Ross

Author:Liz Ross [Ross, Liz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Australia & New Zealand
ISBN: 9780994537898
Google: gBjkzAEACAAJ
Publisher: Interventions Incorporated
Published: 2020-04-06T02:40:41+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Pilot Unions – ’You go out and it’s War’

The pilots’ dispute was particularly controversial. A claim for a 30 percent wage rise quickly escalated into an all-out battle, with the Accord partners – the government and ACTU – and the airlines joined in crushing the pilots and their union. The dramatic use of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and local and international scab pilots finished the dispute.

The stakes were high. The end of the two-airlines policy was due in 1990, meaning cutthroat competition for the industry. There was no doubt among airline workers that cuts to wages and conditions were inevitable. The pilots viewed their claim as a last chance to shore up a higher base rate of wages and conditions before deregulation. The government, with an election scheduled for 1990 and the possibility of a historic fourth term for Labor and PM Bob Hawke, did not need a major industrial dispute, challenging the Accord, by a highly unionised group of workers.

Hawke was blunt in his warning to the pilots, ‘It’s a different game this time, boys. You go out and it’s war.’314 The pilots, the domestic airlines and Accord partners were on a collision course.

The Airlines and Government

Like industries such as steel and the waterfront, the airlines faced major structural change, facilitated by the government in the name of competition – part of the Accord agenda. Keating and Hawke drew up plans to end the long-standing two-airlines policy – shared by the government-owned Trans Australia Airlines (TAA) and the Peter Abeles–Rupert Murdoch owned Ansett – by November 1990. In 1986, TAA was corporatised and prepared for privatisation. Both airlines were facing the huge expense of refitting their fleet of planes; needing to slash costs, they looked to employees’ wages and conditions.315 Alex Paterson, an AFAP member, argues that pilots’ pay and conditions represented under 5 percent of operational expenditure. But removing the pilots from the equation would set an example for other workers and free up the airlines to tackle the key microeconomic reform of restructuring ground work without opposition from the other unions, especially the TWU.316

What were the airlines’ strengths? They were extremely well prepared for a dispute and had regular tactics meetings with the government and the ACTU’s Bill Kelty. They were expecting a short, sharp dispute. Abeles told a crucial 15 August 1989 meeting that the dispute ‘will be short – we won’t give them anything.’317

The publicly owned TAA had the resources of government behind it in the case of any confrontation or resistance from all its employees – pilots, flight attendants or ground staff. The government, at the urging of the ACTU and TWU, was prepared to prop up both airlines if the pilots held out. TAA had an experienced management team, including a number of former pilots and managers such as Ted Harris, a former CEO of Ampol petroleum, an old mate of Hawke’s and good friend of Abeles.

Ansett also lined up a formidable team. Abeles ran Thomas Nationwide Transport – TNT,

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