Professional engineers at Qantas have voted to impose overtime and out-of-hours callout bans after reaching an impasse with the airline on wage negotiations.
Members of the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers, Australia (APESMA) in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, which represents approximately 130 professional engineers at Qantas, voted in favour of the bans on November 6 after talks with Qantas over the past seven months failed to resolve a new enterprise bargaining agreement.
”We are calling on [Qantas’ chief executive] Alan Joyce to resolve this dispute,” said APESMA director Catherine Bolger told The Age newspaper. ”He has indicated that he wants to have a more constructive relationship with the workforce than was the case under his predecessor.”
Qantas denies that the bans will lead to flight delays or aircraft groundings, despite claims by the union that the bans would mean some aircraft could not be signed off to clear them for flying duties.
Qantas claims that the union is seeking pay increases of 30 per cent over three years, while the union says that it wants pay increases in line with those awarded to other Qantas employees. APESMA also says that it wants a new fatigue management policy for its engineers, claiming that some have had only five hours rest between shifts.
