ASU forces Government backflip on aviation funding – A big win for Qantas workers

Following yesterday’s announcement by Qantas that 2,500 Qantas workers would be stood down for 2 months from mid-August, the ASU put pressure on the Federal Government to confirm that its newly announced $750 a week payment would be made available to all stood down Qantas workers, not just pilots and cabin crew.

The Federal Government has now decided to listen to the ASU calls, and has confirmed overnight that all ground crew employed by Qantas will be eligible. This is a big relief as it means no Qantas workers will be stood down without any pay, but there is still a lot of detail to be worked out about the standdowns and how the $750 a week payment will operate.

We are meeting with Qantas on Thursday to push to make sure that the standdowns are introduced in the most fair way possible, and to work through the detail of how the payments to staff will operate.

Some of the issues we need answers on are:

• How the new $750 payment interacts with the existing COVID-19 Disaster Relief Payments available through Centrelink, and the existing $500 week payment for international staff. We want as many people as possible to get the higher $750 payment
• How many workers Qantas expects to stand down in each port
• How standdowns will operate and whether access to Special Leave Without Pay can be broadened
• How the allocation of work will be done in a fair way among staff

If you have any additional questions please raise these with your delegates or organiser. We will provide members an update with further information as soon as we can.