Yesterday (Wednesday 14 May 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), Patrick Lawler (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), Jane Cleary (AIPA), Maddy Vaz (AIPA), Geoff Thompson and Nick Swanson.
Prior to the meeting (Monday 12 May 2025) we provided the company with a joint union “without prejudice” proposal. Our “without prejudice” proposal essentially distils and summarises the key elements of our detailed statement of claims into a list covering two pages of what is required to reach agreement.
A copy of the proposal is attached –
click here.
The bulk of the meetings was spent discussing our proposal.
At 10:30am we also spent some time discussing the potential for a roster bidding system with David McCutcheon joining via Teams.
Separate to our bargaining meetings we have also commenced the roster manual discussions between appropriate company representatives and Jeremy Tsunoda from the wide-body fleet and Susha Semenikow from the narrow-body fleet. The first meeting was positive, and more roster manual meetings have been scheduled.
One of our greatest frustrations to date has been that the company is extremely quick to identify components of our claims which they cannot agree to but refuses to put back a counteroffer or details of what they can agree to.
At yesterday’s meeting the Company finally committed to providing a counteroffer (proposal of their own) before or at the next meeting.
The next bargaining meeting is scheduled for 2 June 2025 in Melbourne. From our point of view, this meetings and the details of their proposal will be pivotal in determining the course of bargaining.
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
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