A flight attendants union accused Australian flag carrier Qantas Monday of plotting to train hundreds of strike breakers to thwart a threatened Christmas work stoppage over plans for a new low-cost London base.
As it took the case to a top commission, the Flight Attendants Association of Australia (FAAA) said the training underway involved low-profile pickups by an unmarked bus near a Sydney hotel where the recruits were housed, midnight-to-dawn training hours and the use of code-words.
"Every indication is that they are just using these people as strike-breakers," FAAA divisional secretary Michael Mijatov told AFP.
The union has threatened a strike during the peak Christmas period over the company's plan to establish a new reduced-cost base for 400 air crew in London next year.
The airline denied there was any secrecy about the training or hiring of the roughly 350 flight attendants it has employed on three-month contracts and said the union had been kept fully informed.
Qantas said it would bring in other staff over the peak Christmas period if needed to maintain services.
"As we have done in the past we will put contingency plans in place to make sure our customers will travel," airline spokesman Michael Sharp told AFP.
Asked if this would involve bringing in non-union staff, he added: "We have done that in the past."
The Australian Industrial Relations Commission earlier Monday ordered talks between the two sides which were inconclusive, with the union saying the company had failed to justify why it needed the temporary staff.
Under an enterprise agreement with the union, Qantas must show work could not be undertaken by current full-time staff before fixed-term employment is given to others.
Qantas counsel Frank Parry told the commission the airline "was not exactly sure of the case being advanced against it" and said the union was attempting to obtain things the enterprise agreement did not entitle it to.
Union official Mijatov said the union would be returning to the commission on Tuesday with a new complaint concerning alleged management attempts to discourage the new recruits from joining the trade union.
After Prime Minister John Howard's re-election for a new three-year term on a ticket stressing reform of labour legislation, analysts said the dispute was shaping up as one that could have wide-ranging ramifications.
Comparisons have been drawn with a landmark 1998 dispute with dockers on the Sydney waterfront, which was marked by the use of strike-breakers by the management.
"It would be certainly a dispute of national significance in that it could set the tone for the industrial relations landscape for the next three years," John Spoehr of the University of Adelaide's Centre for Labour Research told AFP.
"Qantas has been pretty aggressively positioning itself in the market," he added, saying that in the post-September 11 world airlines were under particularly acute pressure to increase margins.
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