Australia’s aviation industry is experiencing increasing industrial tensions, as employees at Virgin Australia and Jetstar push back over wages, poor working conditions, and scheduling issues.
At Virgin Australia, cabin crew have increasingly been declining requests to work on their scheduled days off, with the union representing flight attendants raising concerns about long duty periods, fatigue, rostering and the compensation offered for additional work.
The dispute has already had an impact on passengers, with around 30 Virgin Australia flights reportedly cancelled each week after the airline was unable to find enough cabin crew to operate some services.
Cabin crew representatives are calling for shorter duty limits and better compensation, arguing that repeatedly asking exhausted crew to give up their days off is placing additional pressure on an already demanding job.
Virgin Australia disputes the characterisation of the disruption as industrial action and says discussions with unions over a new enterprise agreement are continuing.
Meanwhile, Jetstar is facing its own industrial dispute involving around 1,000 airport and customer-service workers.
Workers have taken targeted industrial action, including refusing to collect certain passenger fees such as excess-baggage weight, seat-change charges and flight changes. Their union is seeking improved wages, penalty and overtime rates, leave provisions and other workplace conditions.
Jetstar says it has offered improvements to pay and allowances and has measures in place to minimise disruption to passengers. While the disputes at the two airlines involve different groups of employees, they highlight a common issue facing the aviation industry: keeping aircraft flying requires thousands of people working demanding and often unpredictable hours — and those workers are increasingly demanding that their pay and conditions reflect the pressures of the job.
For passengers, the concern is simple. If these disputes continue to escalate, the effects could eventually be felt through more cancelled flights, changed schedules and delays.
The coming weeks will be closely watched as airlines and their employees attempt to reach agreements without further disruption to the travelling public.
Both airlines have achieved record-breaking profits, and the staff feel their hard work and dedication played a major role in this success. They are now demanding better pay and incentives.
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