Air travel in WA — including in the FIFO sector — is at risk of further severe disruption as aircraft engineers servicing Virgin Australia’s regional fleet this week joined their Qantas Group counterparts in preparing for a wave of industrial action.
A ballot of about 1000 Qantas Group engineers on their support for a potential strike in protest over their pay and conditions closes on August 10, with the union representing the workers confident it will be decisively backed in.
The West Australian has revealed the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association this week launched a second ballot of the approximately 50 technicians working at Virgin Australia Regional Airlines.
Both polls — launched after obtaining protected action orders from the Fair Work Commission — canvas “work stoppages up to 12 hours in length” and “overtime bans”.
Between them, Qantas Group — which includes Jetstar and Network Aviation — and VARA operate the vast majority of both regular passenger and FIFO flights in WA.
VARA provides FIFO services for Rio Tinto and BHP and flies between Perth and a number of regional destinations including Broome, Darwin, Kalgoorlie, Karratha, Newman and Port Hedland.
ALAEA federal secretary Steve Purvinas said engineers at both airlines had endured years of pay freezes despite larger workloads, leading to fatigue and burnout.
He said Qantas Group engineers would commence “a token move of industrial action” within the next three weeks in the hope of prompting the national carrier back to the negotiating table.
The earliest VARA engineers would be able to engage in industrial action would be seven working days after their ballot closes on September 14.
Mr Purvinas claimed the union “do not intend to structure industrial action to disrupt services”.
“Our contest is with the airline, not the public,” he said.
“To that end we can have work stoppages but offer labor via overtime to cover the deficit in work. Certain options appear on the ballot paper but that does not necessarily mean they will be used.”
It remains to be seen what impact any kind of engineering downtime would have for airlines accustomed to operating on finely-tuned schedules.
Virgin Australia did not directly address questions about whether the airline was concerned about disruption to its WA services, a spokesperson saying only that the company was aware a protected action ballot had been launched.
“We intend to continue discussions with our team members and the ALAEA to understand the issues and work towards a new enterprise agreement,” the spokesperson said.
In a previous statement, Qantas Group said it was “disappointed” the union was threatening “completely unnecessary” industrial action.
“The latest claim by the ALAEA was for a one-year agreement with a 12 per cent pay rise for Qantas engineers,” the statement said.
“That’s something we simply can’t afford and is well above wage increases for other employees across the group.”
Mr Purvinas said the 12 per cent claim equaled to 3 per cent for each of the four years engineers’ pay had been frozen.
Both Qantas and Virgin Australia made headlines for their poor performance during the winter school holidays, including hundreds of flight cancellations and widespread delays.
In June, VARA had the worst on-time performance of any airline with nearly half of all flights either delayed or cancelled.
Travelers at Perth Airport endured another evening of chaos on Tuesday after severe storms cut off power to the site and backup generators servicing the terminals failed.
That forced all outgoing flights to be canceled — wrecking the travel plans of thousands of West Australians.
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