Tony Sheldon ‘willing to be arrested’ over Qantas

    STEFANIE BALOGH
    The Australian
    April 17, 2014


TRANSPORT Workers Union national secretary Tony Sheldon has delivered a warning to Qantas, saying the union is not bluffing over its threat to launch a campaign of civil disobedience over job cuts.      

Mr Sheldon, however, vowed that the campaign would not ambush passengers and leave them stranded, as Qantas did in 2011 when it grounded its fleet.

The TWU membership is still consulting over its plan, which could include blocking roads, after ruling out strike ­action against the airline.

“One thing I can guarantee is … that we will not do what Alan Joyce and his board did — you will not wake up and find your family stranded somewhere in the world. You will not find your kids unaccompanied stranded somewhere in the world,’’ Mr Sheldon told the Nat­ional Press Club in Canberra.

The action is to protest against Qantas’s $2 billion cost-cutting drive, which involves shedding 5000 jobs after the airline posted a $252 million half-year loss. “Welcome to the casualisation of the national icon, welcome to where the Flying Kangaroo meets the Golden Arches,’’ said Mr Sheldon, who is also Labor’s national vice-president.

A Qantas spokeswoman said the airline and its subsidiaries employed very few casual workers and the majority of its 33,000 staff was employed on a full-time basis. “There are some areas of the business that are more suited to part-time work, due to flight schedules and peaks of workload, and we are implementing changes to these parts of the business,’’ she said.

Mr Sheldon said executive pay at the airline had risen by 82 per cent over the past four years — a claim denied by Qantas — and in the face of this “obscenity, I announced that my union would be considering civil disobedience to support the rights of the forgotten employees and to stop Qantas destroying their living standards’’.      

“I and other officials of the union would be willing to be arrest­ed if that’s what it takes.’’

so not sure what they want... do they want the whole company to just go under...everyone lose their jobs.... is that what they want?..seems to me if a company is losing money they have no choice but to face facts...maybe just shutting Qantas own completely will save a lot of bother...

I agree bosses do seem to get huge pay packages..I will never understand that...but from what I have read union officals dont do to bad either..and all they do is talk?... they dont have to worry where the next dollar is coming from.

You sometimes just have to wonder about the brains of a TWU (or any union) leader. if you take this kind of action all that will happen si that passengers will go elsewhere and Qantas will collapse. You would think that after Holden Ford and Toyota these idiots would be a bit better informed but apparently they do need to be jailed if only for the benefit of the rest of us.

longweekend58 wrote on Apr 17^th, 2014 at 5:47pm:

I'm sorry did you NOT read the article?

Think it time to declare the current Qantas CEO a failure - worse than most in fact.

Some times the employees should not be the ones who cop the blame for the idiots above.

longweekend58 wrote on Apr 17^th, 2014 at 8:37pm:

You need to leave this anger at the unions at the door. Sure, unions have had a large amount of corrupt individuals in them.  But guess what, so have Business lobby groups, business industry groups and parties from every political specter.  And in the end, all one can really say is that unions do play a vital role in protecting their members' rights, just like business industry groups play a vital role in protecting their members' rights.  And lets not forget that we celebrate each year the achievements of the unions, for if we didn't have them we'd probably still be out there with a screwed up work life balance, a stagnant real wage growth in the middle class, and very limited being done with regard to ohs.

We also shouldn't forget that the point on who shut down services the last time is correct: it was joyce. Another of his "bright ideas" that have led this once great company into the complete pits.

Anyway, leave your hatred outside the door and argue on the words being spelt out in the article. They will have industrial dispute, but not with impacting services to customers.  Unless of course Joyce has anything to do with it.

Armchair_Politician wrote on Apr 18^th, 2014 at 7:50am:


To me it looks like the militant unions care about customers more than that fascist Joyce.

sir prince duke alevine wrote on Apr 17^th, 2014 at 9:23pm:


Lol!!!!!!

Yeah our work life balance is just superb eh?
I work 65 hours per week.

I know for a fact none of those shop floor workers union represent do more than 40 hours.
They have as much team attitude to corp objectives as a gang of mercenaries.