Christmas not cleared for take-off
After strike talk, things turn septic at Air NZ
Strike or no strike at Air New Zealand, a fair bit of damage has already been done.
The airline and its engineers go to mediation today to avert a pre-Christmas strike that would be terrible for travellers and bad for Air New Zealand, which has suffered disruption throughout the year.
In the way of these things, mediation typically results in the heat being turned down, a working party being set up, strike notice withdrawn and a quiet settlement somewhere down the track.
But these are not typical times for a company that has enjoyed relative industrial harmony — certainly in public — with its 12,000 staff for the best part of a decade.
The airline's proud of its employee engagement scores as being in the upper quartile of international peers, has long queues of applicants for jobs and often wins best employer awards. In the last year, 71 per cent of employees were “engaged” with the company.
For the past five years it has worked collaboratively with unions — which cover about 70 per cent of its staff — in an attempt to end decades of distrust and hard-ball industrial relations. This High Performance Engagement (HPE) encouraged parties to talk regularly about common interests, leaving positionbased approaches at the door.
It's hard, time consuming and outside the comfort zone for some but it's worked and helped save jobs.
It seems HPE wasn't used with this round of negotiations and even if it had been used there's growing scepticism at the process by some engineers.
After the union lodged a notice of a strike on December 21, things quickly turned septic.
Instead of a reassuring statement about looking forward to mediation and how much progress had already been made, the airline spelled out in some detail the pay the 970 engineers got, demands for car parks, and putting blame on the unions as potentially wrecking Christmas for 40,000 travellers.
It had the look of an employer that feels as if it is under-appreciated.
Likewise the unions, Etu
It [Air NZ] had the look of an employer that feels as if it is underappreciated.
and the Marine Engineers Association, are also publicly injured, painting as “misleading” information released by Air New Zealand which they say is usually run past them before being put out.
Engineers feel “insulted” by an offer they say is less than that made to other employee groups.
The unions' sharp response contrasted with their usual stance of being reluctant to say a bad word about the company.
Just like the airline, they feel under-appreciated.
This leaves both sides in unfamiliar territory after the public spat.
Talks today are with a private mediator. That's before getting to the gnarly substantive issues ahead of them.
Any offer will need to be made quickly to avert a strike, because it could take about three days to ballot members.
It's been a tough year for the airline, including weather disruption and the knock-on affects from Dreamliner engine problems requiring staff (management and operational workers) to spend long hours at the weekend rejigging schedules, and those at the frontline dealing with passengers grumpy at being bumped from flights and aircraft they believed they'd booked.
In spite of this the airline recorded its second best profit, the eye on the bottom line is laser focused.
This month it told staff in an internal newsletter it was looking to cut more costs as part of its plan to get fit for the tougher times that inevitably arrive in the airline business.
The 95 per cent strike vote by the engineers is a sign that not all “Air New Zealanders” are completely on board with the company's approach.
Uncertainty over travel is never good, especially at Christmas time. A resolution to this dispute is needed quickly.