ROSTER CHANGES AND VACCINE UPDATE

Roster Changes

Qantas recently announced significant changes to its rostering practices without consulting employees or the ASU.

Qantas wants to go back to issuing a 2-week roster and start making shift changes at -4 days.

These practices will cause significant disruptions to members lives and are a breach of the enterprise agreement.

Qantas management need to listen and communicate better with workers, instead of unilaterally pushing for impractical and counter-productive options.

If they’d spoke to us first, we could have solved any problems together.

We’ve written to Qantas to notify a dispute.

We are asking Qantas to take the following steps to make rostering fair for all employees.:

• Meet with the ASU,
• Re-establish roster committees at each port,
• issue a 4-week roster with at least one weeks’ notice, and
• notify shift changes 7 days before the day the shift is worked (-6 shift changes).

We have asked for an urgent meeting to discuss these issues with the company. We hope we will have a positive response from the company soon.

Qantas Vaccine Push is Premature

We need to be united as a community and follow the advice of our public health experts. Qantas should be guided by our experts, rather than running its own race.

Many Qantas workers found out about yesterday’s mandatory vaccine push in the media. Sadly, it seems the newspapers found out about this shift in company policy before most employees.

Qantas management need to listen and communicate better with workers, instead of unilaterally pushing for impractical and counter-productive options.

Qantas should be working harder with the ASU to push the government to provide easier access to the appropriate vaccines.

Anyone who has tried to get vaccinated in recent months knows that it can take months to get an appointment for their first jab and several weeks more for their second. Others have been advised they don’t meet the eligibility criteria and are not currently able to access any vaccine. The government cannot even tell us when airline workers will be offered the appropriate vaccine for their age group. This story mirrors the experiences of many across the community

The ASU has always said that airline workers should always have been a priority group in the Federal Government’s vaccinations rollout. You can’t tell people they’re not a priority and then blame them for low vaccination rates.

We will keep members updated with developments.

Pass this bulletin to your colleagues who aren’t in the union. They can join at www.asu.asn.au/ASUJOIN.