By Staff reporters
The airline said more than 6100 passengers would be affected by the strikes.Credit: Edwina Pickles
Up to 24 Qantas flights leaving or bound for Brisbane will be affected when Transport Workers Union members stop work for four hours today.
By late yesterday, Qantas expected 10 flights departing from or arriving in Brisbane today would be cancelled.
Another 14 flights would also be delayed for between five and 35 minutes.
The airline said more than 6100 passengers across Australia would be affected today by the Transport Workers Union-led strikes in the most significant disruptions to the airline's passengers this year from industrial action.
The TWU has accused Qantas of exacerbating the situation by looking out ground staff poised to take part in the industrial action this morning - a claim rejected by the airline.
Qantas and the TWU have been locked in long-running talks over a new wages deal and TWU members recently voted to back industrial action. Today there will be four-hour strikes by its members as well as a ban on undertaking higher duties.
TWU national secretary Tony Sheldon blamed Qantas for any delays to passengers and accused the airline of failing to negotiate in good faith. ''This is a position that they've been forced into by Qantas's lack of good faith and negotiations,'' he said.
Qantas spokeswoman Olivia Wirth said the union wage claim of 15 per cent over three years was ''not sustainable in the current economic climate'' and said the union was trying to place restrictions on its ''flexibility'' to ''scale up or scale down'' its workforce.
She said the airline would be able to reduce the impact of the strike by drafting in local managers in operational roles and using larger aircraft. Ms Wirth said there could be further delays in the coming days due to flow-on effects from the strikes.
Qantas is also subject to industrial action by its pilots and licensed engineers, with the airline resisting a concerted union push for restrictions on the outsourcing of work and for ''job security'' clauses in its agreements.
Mr Sheldon said Qantas was determined to ''outsource its own workforce at very low rates of pay'' and accused its chairman, Leigh Clifford, of being a union buster and wanting a change of government and a return to WorkChoices-style workplace laws.
Ms Wirth said the airline was concerned that three unions were working together to attack it as part of a co-ordinated campaign. "While Qantas is focused on building a better airline for our customers, employees and shareholders, three separate unions are taking co-ordinated industrial action and holding our passengers to ransom,'' she said.
She said a further 800 passengers would be affected today by industrial action by engineers as six flights were set to be delayed.
The pilots' union said yesterday it had received strong public support for its industrial action, which so far has been limited to pro-union in-flight announcements and not complying with the uniform code.
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