As you know last week it was announced that Cobham has signed a contract to extend its current QantasLink contract through to 2026. Whilst a 10-year extension is welcome news for Cobham in terms of future certainty and stability, the fallout from the announcement on engineering employees is apparently significant. The result is an approximate 10% reduction to Cobham line maintenance engineering numbers.

Representing Qantas LAME members is always a balancing act between those who want us to constantly take up the fight and others who desire us to be more conservative. Of course, it’s not possible to please all members all of the time. I do, however, appreciate the support we receive from members at both ends of the scale for the various approaches we use. During periods of protected industrial action, conservative members have led the way out the gate. When patience or compromise has been required the more combative members have also supported us.

Hot on the heels of another great performance on the world stage, expressions of interest are being sought from the entire ALAEA membership to represent the ALAEA at the 2017 AMC to be held in Orlando, Florida (April 24th-27th). 5 positions are available on the team consisting of 3 Mechanical and 2 Avionic engineers with the optimum team representing mainline, regional, general aviation, helicopters and technical areas of the ALAEA.

In accordance with the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act 2009 and Rule 38 of the ALAEA Rules, the 2015 ALAEA Audited Financial Report is now available for members to view on our website, www.alaea.asn.au in the member notices section.

Further consultation with the Company regarding engineering redundancies took place via a teleconference on 12 May.

Over the last week I’ve been speaking with some of our union Reps who work in Sydney and they relay that members are frequently asking questions about the leave burn court case. In this notice I will try and explain as much as I can but many aspects cannot be explained in depth for legal reasons. That is, anything I put in the notice will be taken by the Qantas legal team and used against us

The Victorian Government has mandated two extra public holidays for Victoria in 2016 and 2017, Easter Saturday and Grand Final Friday. As a result, additional entitlements to time off should be available to LAMEs working in Victoria. In March management issued notification that they would simply amend the shift averaging to pay out these days without consultation, consideration or agreement of the staff.

To All Members
Small Aircraft Licence Proposal – Consultation closing soon.
Your comments and input, particularly if you are a member who works in GA, are needed

The ALAEA now has about 50 members who have indicated to us they wish to pursue action against the airline to seek to recover forced leave and seek penalties against managers and the airline for breaching the EA. As usual Qantas are continuing to try and confuse the issue by handing further letters to those members who have raised a dispute and to trick others by an offer to adjust their leave burn dates to a more suitable time. Members who take up the offer to adjust leave burn dates should know they will potentially waive any chance to recover lost leave as it may be taken as “approval” for leave burn to be applied to them as individuals.

A further Eastern EBA meeting took place at Mascot on 15 March. Unfortunately the assessment of your negotiating team was that there was no real progress on the key issues that need to be resolved.