EFA Update - First Bargaining Meeting
As foreshadowed in our last update, yesterday we held our first bargaining meeting with Express Freighters Australia (EFA) Management. The meeting was held in person in Sydney.
Attending for EFA were Richard Hardonin (Head of Flying Operations and Chief Pilot, Qantas Freight), Kate Bennett (Manager Base Operations, Qantas Freight), Riki Cannon (Head of Commercial, Qantas Freight), Alison Hamilton (Qantas HR), Jim Morton (Qantas IR), Karl Romberg-Yee (Qantas IR) and Tom O’Donnell (Qantas IR),
Attending for the AFAP were EFA pilot representatives, Susha Semenikow and Dean McMahon, along with AFAP Executive Director, Simon Lutton.
As also previously advised, last week we sent the Joint Union ‘Statement of Claims’ to EFA management and Qantas IR. This is the document we also sent you last Friday via a link in our update.
The meeting started with EFA providing an overview of its operation and various background information. This included details of the fleet transitions, pilot numbers, average work hours performed by EFA pilots, pilot attrition and expected recruitment and promotions. EFA also provided an overview of its pilot engagement survey.
This led into the AFAP providing a detailed explanation of its survey results, as previously summarised in an earlier update and included in the Joint Union ‘Statement of Claims’.
We also covered a number of preliminary or housekeeping matters to do with frequency of meetings and rostering of pilot representatives for bargaining meetings.
Happily, the company has finally agreed to our request for joint union meetings, acknowledging that this would be a more efficient process, at least for the discussion of our joint claim items. They have however not committed to maintaining joint meetings for the duration of bargaining.
In terms of meeting frequency, it has been proposed that meetings be scheduled for every 2-3 weeks with the next meeting to be scheduled in the week beginning 3 February 2025 and another in the week beginning 24 February 2025. At this stage it looks like these meetings, involving all pilot unions (AFAP, AIPA and TWU) will take place in Sydney. Given the volume of material to discuss and the urgent need to make tangible progress, we have suggested these meetings be scheduled as full day meetings and that all parties come well prepared before the meetings.
We will keep you updated on developments.
If you have any questions on the above, please contact us directly or Simon Lutton at the AFAP on (03) 9928 5737 or email
simon@afap.org.au.
Yours sincerely
Susha Semenikow and Dean McMahon
AFAP EFA Pilot Representatives