This week (Tuesday 1 April 2025) we held another all-day joint union bargaining meeting in Sydney with Express Freighters Australia (EFA) management.
Attending for EFA were Richard Hardonin (Head of Flying Operations and Chief Pilot, Qantas Freight), Kate Bennett (Senior 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),
The pilot representatives and union employees attending for the EFA pilots were Simon Lutton (AFAP), Susha Semenikow, Dean McMahon, Ed Nell (TWU), Aaron Kirsh, Jane Cleary (AIPA), Maddy Vaz (AIPA), James Ahern and Nick Swanson.
In preparation for the meeting, the company produced and ran us through a detailed power-point presentation covering what they referred to as:
- The bargaining context;
- A general response to our claims; before
- A detailed response to each individual claim.
The bargaining context was predominantly an analysis of EFA’s place in the market covering issues such as number of flights, number of pilots, average tenure, work hours and market share. We highlighted the inaccuracies and what we saw as flawed comparisons contained within their analysis which did not reflect the unique nature of the night freight operations at EFA.
The general response to our claims involved a slide of “what we can do” and a slide of “what we cannot do” from the company’s perspective. It also covered what they had costed our claims at. In summary, they advised that they assessed our claims to represent a 50% to 55% increase in remuneration and a 30% to 35% reduction in pilot availability (due to our rostering/lifestyle claims). There is no need for us to reprint the garbage that is the mythical “Qantas Wages Policy” here. Again, we highlighted just how far EFA pilots have fallen behind industry standards as a result of the opportunistic tactics employed by EFA in the last round of bargaining.
When running through each of our individual claims they used a colour coding approach indicating which items could be agreed in green, grey for items they did not consider EA matters and red for no. Light green and light red indicated that more discussion was needed. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of green at this stage. Overall, it was extremely disappointing that the company seemed to colour code almost everything in red without even coming back with a counterproposal.
The unnecessarily obstinate approach from the company is highlighted by the fact that the vast majority of items which we have asked for and they have refused to move on are entitlements which are already in place for pilots elsewhere within the Qantas Group.
In response to our lifestyle claims the company continued to refer to incorporating the issues within a proposed rostering manual. This rostering manual would be referenced in the EA but be maintained and changed separate to the agreement. This is not an unusual approach.
For our part, we advised we were open to having some off-line meetings between some pilot representatives we nominate with some operational managers nominated by the company. The purpose of these meetings would be to see what could be agreed in relation to items such as how AX days are cleared and a number of our other rostering claims.
We were however very clear to state that regardless of being contained in a rostering manual, any entitlements would need to be specified in the EA. We are however open to having the processes for providing these entitlements detailed in a rostering manual. We are also yet to reach agreement on how changes to the rostering manual can be made.
Over the coming weeks we will be approaching pilots who we believe have a good skill set to participate in these off-line rostering manual discussions.
Further negotiation meetings have been scheduled for 29 April 2025 and 14 May 2025.
Now that we have fully explained each of our claims and the company has responded to each of these claims, we believe it is a suitable time to take stock and begin to formulate proposals and priorities. This will be the emphasis of the upcoming meetings. From the outset we have stressed the need to make quick progress. This latest meeting demonstrated anything but quick progress.
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