Steeve Creedy | Nov 28, 2007 |The Australian | News.com.au

The airline warned passengers it would make every effort to minimise disruption to its services after the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association applied to the Industrial Relations Commission to conduct a ballot of members as a prelude to industrial action.

Engineers are key to the airline's operations because they must approve aircraft to fly.

"Three per cent just isn't quite good enough when the Australian average wage has been increasing by 4.6 per cent per year on average for the last five or 10 years," ALAEA federal secretary Steve Purvinas said yesterday. "So we're looking at an industrial action ballot that will finish on December 22."

Mr Purvinas said the action would include overtime bans, bans on higher duties and stopwork meetings but he said the union was not looking at disruptions over Christmas.

"I think we've got 60 days to actually take the action, so we'll give Qantas some time to negotiate, but we'll expect them to actually come out with a bit more of a reasonable offer than what they gave us a week or so ago."

Qantas executive general manager Kevin Brown said it was extraordinary that the union had chosen to ballot members to take industrial action the day before the parties were meeting to talk about negotiations.

"We will take every measure to put in place contingencies to ensure the smooth operation of the airline and protect our customers," he said.

The new industrial threat emerged as Qantas struck a landmark deal with its flight attendants that will allow it to use a recently established subsidiary to employ long-haul cabin crew on lower rates and longer hours.

The airline says the new enterprise agreement would lead to the creation of more than 2000 full-time cabin crew jobs in Australia over three years and allow it to better compete with overseas carriers such as Emirates.

The alternative was a massive ramping up of the airline's overseas bases with an increasing proportion of flight attendants employed offshore.

Under the agreement with the Flight Attendants Association of Australia, existing flight attendants will remain employed by Qantas Airways on current rates and conditions.

But new staff would be employed by Qantas Cabin Crew Australia on lower rates similar to those paid by Jetstar International. The deal will see them working about 25 to 35 per cent more hours than existing staff. Qantas has also pledged that the current 75-25 mix of Australian and offshore crew would remain.

The union and the airline yesterday described the agreement as a win. The union said it provided for a 3 per cent annual pay rise, a $3000 "sign on" bonus for its 3000 existing flight attendants and improved superannuation arrangements that allow salary sacrifice.

FAAA international division secretary Michael Mijatov said QCCA would employ staff on Jetstar International rates and hours but they would get better conditions in terms of annual, long-service and sick leave as well as overtime provisions.

Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon said the agreement was positive for all concerned and opened up a range of options for current crew.

by Steeve Creedy | Aviation Writer | The Australian | SOURCE | 

http://www.news.com.au/travel/story/0,26058,22835121-5014090,00.html