Qantas Engineers To Strike

Qantas Engineers’ Alliance, has announced a series of rolling strikes that will start on Thursday to support the union’s call for increased wages. 

A Qantas spokesperson said:

“We’re putting contingencies in place and don’t currently expect this industrial action to have an impact on customers.”

“We’ve held a series of meetings with the unions and made progress on a number of items. We want to reach an agreement that includes pay rises and lifestyle benefits for our people.”

Qantas states on background:

• There are a number of different types of engineers across the Qantas Group.

• The employees taking part in this round of industrial action are Qantas part of our Aircraft Maintenance Engineers (AMEs) teams. There are around 1100 employees covered by these agreements, out of 2,500 engineers across Qantas.

• Qantas has been notified of protected industrial action involving a range of work stoppages at airports around Australia on Thursday 26 September, Monday 30 September, Wednesday 2 October, and Friday 4 October.

• These AME’s are represented by The Australian Workers Union, Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the Communications, Electrical, Electronic, Energy, Information, Postal, Plumbing and Allied Services Union of Australia.  These are known as the Alliance Unions

• Only members of these unions can take part in the industrial action.

• Their enterprise agreements expired at the end of June 2024.

The Qantas Engineers’ Alliance – a union alliance comprising the AMWU, the AWU, and the ETU – said engineers have had their skills devalued by the airline and their wages go backward significantly in real terms over the past decade.

The wage claim made by the Alliance is for 5 percent per year, and a 15 percent first year payment to make up for 3.5 years of wage freezes.

Steve Murphy, AMWU National Secretary said:

“Nothing has changed at Qantas — their workers feel undervalued, underpaid and underappreciated. 

“Our highly skilled members deserve fair wages for the incredible work they do to keep us all safe in the air.”