Public backs Qantas jobs campaign

Date: 26 February 2006

The Australian Workers' Union has welcomed the release of polling conducted by Roy Morgan Research and commissioned by the AWU which shows that 87 per cent of Australians want Qantas to keep their maintenance facilities in Australia and that 86 per cent of Australians support unions campaigning to keep those jobs in Australia.

AWU National Secretary Bill Shorten said the polling conclusively demonstrates to Qantas that if they replace over 3,000 Australian aviation maintenance workers by moving their maintenance facilities to Asia they will be meet with a backlash from the Australian public.

Qantas is expected to make an announcement this week regarding the fate of its maintenance employees who work at major facilities in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane Airports maintaining Qantas' fleet of Boeing & Airbus aircraft. It has been reported that Qantas maintenance could be outsourced to facilities in Singapore, Indonesia, China or New Zealand. Last week the Federal Government made an announcement blocking Singapore Airline's application to fly between Australia and the US restricting access to the lucrative route to only Qantas and United Airlines.

"Qantas has always been the Australian national carrier, a fact which Qantas management like to use to their benefit when lobbying the Government to protect them from competition on the trans-pacific routes. This research demonstrates that if Qantas wants to keep their reputation as the "Spirit of Australia" then it will need to keep Aussie jobs in our country" Mr. Shorten said.

Mr. Shorten said the AWU was encouraged by the polling figures that indicated a huge level of support from the general public for a campaign by the union movement to stop Qantas sending the maintenance jobs off-shore.

"The polling has found that almost nine-in-ten Australians (86%) support the unions' campaigning against these jobs being lost to Asia. What is even more encouraging is that 85% of Coalition voters also support the unions' campaign" Mr. Shorten said.

More information on the polling data collected by Roy Morgan Research can be found by downloading the data from Roy Morgan Research from the AWU website.

For further information

Union:	The Australian Workers' Union
Phone:	03 8327 0888
Fax:	03 8327 0899
Email:	members@awu.net.au
WWW:	http://www.awu.net.au

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