More than 1,000 Qantas engineers across Australia will walk off the job in industrial action they claim could kick the week off with peak-hour travel chaos, but the airline says it has contingencies in place and is not expecting any disruptions to travel.
Flights between 7am and 9am across three timezones on Monday morning are set to be affected in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.
The months-long dispute between Qantas management and line maintenance engineers will see the latter strike for two hours.
Line maintenance engineers tow and marshal aircraft on the tarmac, as well as run turnaround checks on aircraft on the ground to clear them for takeoff.
Qantas engineers started industrial action on Thursday, when engines and components maintenance workers stopped work.
The national secretary of the Australian Workers Union, Paul Farrow, said management had “backed them into a corner”.
“As a former aircraft engineer myself, I know there is real pride in getting people where they need to go safely,” he said, adding that “there wouldn’t be a single engineer relishing the idea of delaying passengers”.
“[But] Qantas management has absolutely smashed morale among engineers, and now we’ve reached a real fork in the road. Engineers won’t accept seeing their wages lurch backward in real terms while executives get showered in cash.”
Last month, the Qantas board cut former chief executive Alan Joyce’s final pay packet by $9.26m reducing his final $21.4m in total earnings for 2022-23 by nearly half.
Qantas engineers are represented by a union alliance comprising the AMWU, the AWU, and the ETU. The workers have been in negotiations since April, as their enterprise agreement expired at the end of June.
The engineers’ alliance wants a 5% a year pay increase, along with a 15% first year payment, to make up for what they say has been three and a half years of wage freezes.
The striking engineers will hold rallies in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth.
Qantas has been notified of protected industrial action involving a range of work stoppages at airports around Australia from Thursday 26 September.
A spokesperson said the airline has “contingencies in place and doesn’t expect Monday’s planned strike action to have an impact on customers, or their travel plans”.
“Over the past four days, we have seen no disruptions to our network as a result of the industrial action from some of our engineering workgroups.
“Our teams have done a great job helping customers safely get to their destination over the busy weekend with school holidays and the footy finals.”
The airline said there were no disruptions or cancellations caused by industrial action since Thursday. Wild weather caused some delays and cancellations for all airlines over the weekend.
Before the announcement of Monday morning’s second tranche of industrial action, a spokesperson said progress was being made in wage negotiations.
“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 made a profit of $1.25bn in the 2023-24 financial year, down 28.3% on the previous 12 months.
Its chief executive, Vanessa Hudson, previously said the airline had deliberately reduced its margins on international travel as it worked to balance the needs of shareholders, employees and customers.
