
Issue No 111		14 September 2001

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News

Qantas Workers Move To Protect Their Entitlements

More than 1,000 Qantas maintenance workers today stopped work in support of their Ansett colleagues and to safeguard their own accrued entitlements.

The Qantas workers marched on Ansett's Mascot Terminal to support demands that the Ansett workers be paid 100% of their entitlements in the wake of this morning's announcement that the carrier could not even afford to pay the workers' wages.

Qantas workers are currently negotiating their own Enterprise Agreement and their claim demands that their entitlements should be paid into an Industry Trust Fund.

The collapse of Ansett could lead to more than 18,000 direct job losses and thousands of indirect job losses according to unions. The Ansett workers alone stand to lose not only their incomes, but also their accrued entitlements, which amount to more than $400 million.

What started as a trickle has now become an avalanche of workers losing everything through no fault of their own and the Federal Government's excuses for not providing legislative protection for workers are now seen by everyone as irrelevant and ideologically driven.

The community believes that all workers should receive 100% of their accrued entitlements if the company they work for goes belly up.

Unions and the community are becoming increasingly impatient with the Federal Government's tinkering around the edges of Corporations Law, with no real changes being made to protect workers' entitlements.

The call by unions for the establishment of Industry Trust Funds to protect their members' entitlements cannot go unanswered. If such a scheme had been in place at Ansett, the disaster now confronting more than 18,000 families could be very different

The Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union has established an Industry Trust Fund, Manusafe which was at the centre of the recent Tri Star and Maintrain disputes.

Paul Bastian, State Secretary of the AMWU, which represents maintenance workers at Ansett and Qantas said that the union would accept nothing less than 100% of what the workers were owed in accrued entitlements.

"Ansett has been a disaster waiting to happen and there is no doubt that the Federal Government has known about it for some time." said Paul Bastian

"The workers at Ansett should expect nothing less than 100% of their entitlements and it is up to Air New Zealand as the parent company to take responsibility for the debt."

"What happened to workers at Ansett should never have happened. Its no wonder that our members at Qantas are now fighting to make sure that it can't happen to them."

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  Issue 111 contents

Interview: Amidst the Debris
ACTU President Sharan Burrow surveys the wreckage from a week that rocked the world.

Politics: Consequences of Empire
The horror of the events in New York has not led to all American and international observers feeling committed to bloody revenge.

Industrial: Grounded
Ansett workers lay bare their feelings at seeing their company driven into oblivion.

International: Election Results from East Timor
Fretelin as expected has topped the poll in East Timor�s first free democratic election and the violence predicted by some has not eventuated.

E-Change: 3.2 The Electronic Consumerist
In their latest instalment Peter Lewis and Michael Gadiel ask how effective has the law become in safeguarding the things that really matter to us?

Legal: Howard's Falkland War
Zoe Reynolds chronicles the bizarre tale of the Tampa and how a group of refugees bacame pawns in a bigger political game.

Compo: Round Two Begins
Nancy Searle reviews the Sheahan Report and highlights some of the areas of concern to injured workers.

Economics: Knowledge, Power, Banking
Raj Patel questions whether a new World Bank initiative is actually designed to control the way the Third World thinks.

Review: Political Theatre
The Naked Theatre Company is a youthful, adventurous, professional, Sydney theatre company committed to the development and production of Australian playwrights.

Satire: Howard US Visit "Marginally Overshadowed"
Australian Prime Minister John Howard has said his US trip was a complete success, if slightly upstaged towards the middle.

» Howard Deserts Ansett Workers

» Trans Tasman Battle for Entitlements

» Qantas Workers Move To Protect Their Entitlements

» Unions Denounce Muslim Attacks

» Fund Established for New York Workers

» Australian Unionist Lost in New York

» US Flight Crews Support Ansett Workers

» Compo: Threshold Too High

» Della Moves on Premium Evasion

» Travel Site Severs Burma Links

» Paint Company Wants Strike Declared Illegal

» Casino Staff Locked Out Again

» Tax Staff to Strike Back

» Union Applauds Deet Ruling On Clothing

» Unions Take Message to Migrant Workers

» Get Ready to Wobble

» Activists' Notebook

» STOP PRESS: Howard Rolls Abbott on Entitlements