Recently Qantas has been hosting information sessions and one-on-one meetings with staff about their new Roster Improvement Plan. USU members saw this for what it was right away – a scam designed to sell staff on changes Qantas wants to your enterprise agreement to strip away your rights and conditions.

The Qantas ASU Agreement 12 expires on 30 June next year. The timing of this Roster Improvement Plan is highly suspect, given that in every information session the company has held about their proposed roster improvements, they’ve advised that the roster improvements will only be made possible if staff agree to their proposed changes in the next enterprise agreement.

What are those changes, you ask? Qantas won’t give us any answers! Your USU delegates and organiser have questioned the specifics of these proposed changes repeatedly in these information sessions, and the Company has refused to give a definitive answer or explanation.

We can guess what they’re planning, however, and it doesn’t look good for your overtime payments or work-life balance. Qantas has hinted at removing the provision for overtime payment after working 8 hours, so your shift can be extended for up to 12 hours at single dollars.

Also, when Qantas was initially selling these changes, they said you would be able to build your roster based on the hours and shifts you want to work. They’ve since gone back on their word and said that you can’t put in a preference for the length of shift you want to work, so part-timers will still be rostered to work four hour shifts across five days, with shifts extended to up to 12 hours at single dollars.

It’s frightening how quickly these hard-won conditions can be chipped away when a company like Qantas wants to do some cost-cutting. We can’t let them touch these iron-clad conditions in our enterprise agreement, and we need to take this opportunity to push for the changes we want to our rosters and enterprise agreement – longer shifts on less days, no more split days off, and better respect from the company for our work-life balance.

If you or any of your colleagues aren’t yet members of the USU – now is the time to join! We’re going to need strength in numbers to win this fight, to help keep everyone informed on their rights and ready to knock back any of Qantas’s attempts to swindle us into voting up an enterprise agreement that will take our roster rights backwards.