Airport workers claim safety standards are falling
Transport workers are protesting at Brisbane Airport today over safety fears under new Qantas contracts.
TWU QLD Director of Organising Josh Millroy today said at a Brisbane Airport protest that transport workers across the country are protesting over Qantas changes they fear are affecting safety and working standards.
The union claimed that workers were previously employed directly by the company, but now Qantas used 38 different labour hire companies, a tactic they feared was dismantling pay and conditions.
Now there were protest calls over safety concerns, with a union survey of more than 2000 aviation workers revealing 48 percent have been injured at work, while 87 percent saying they believed that had been pressured to work unsafely.
TWU National Secretary Michael Kaine said despite promises of change, Qantas decisions were affecting standards in aviation.
“Right across the Qantas supply chain, workers are being injured and even killed just doing their jobs,” Kaine said. “Their jobs are insecure and casualised, where they once used to be lifetime careers.”
The protest is targeting a move to outsource ground handling, with the union claiming Swissport was receiving nearly 400 safety reports a month.
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“Instead of investing in its workforce, Qantas is still doing its utmost to drag standards to rock bottom by shipping it out to companies like Swissport where we have seen horrific worker injuries,” Kaine said.
TWU is also protesting Qantas’ refusal to reverse fragmentation at Qantas Freight where they fear the use of up to eight different companies to perform work was lowering safety standards.
Last week NSW Health and Safety reps served Qantas Freight with 114 provisional improvement notices over safety failings by management and last year a labour hire work was killed.
Aviation workers have reported injuries like lost fingers to a tug’s tow hook and feet crushed under a cargo loader.
“I love aviation but it is not an industry that will offer job security. I tried for 15 years for a full time job,” one worker said.
“In every agreement negotiation the company says we need to keep conditions tight in order to renew our contracts,” another worker said.
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“Aviation is in crisis, and the dysfunction is only going to continue without a mechanism that brings the entire industry together towards decisions that benefit the whole community,” Kaine said.
“It’s time for Qantas, and airlines and airports right across Australia, to fund decent jobs so we have an aviation industry that works for everyone – and for that we need a Safe and Secure Skies Commission.”
A Qantas spokesperson said Swissport undertakes ground handling work for a number of Australian and international airlines, not just Qantas.
“We take the safety of our operations and people extremely seriously,” the Qantas spokesperson said. “We have an established safety management system for managing all aspects of safety across the airline, which sees incidents investigated and, if required, changes implemented to prevent such incidents occurring in the future.”
A Qantas statement said despite TWU’s claims, there has not been an increase in safety since ground handling moved to Swissport more than five years ago, and that the number of recordable injuries had decreased.
“Proactive reporting on safety hazards demonstrate a strong safety culture by the employees of these ground handlers and is something that we encourage.”
A media statement from Swissport responding to concerns over safety standards said the organisation encourages safety reports, however minor, as part of its rigorous safety-first culture.
“Since Swissport took over Qantas’s ground handling operations, there’s been a 56 percent reduction in recordable injuries, 43 percent total reduction in lost time injuries and 75 percent improvement in aircraft damage prevention,” the statement said.
Swissport claimed it maintains the highest level of certification and is the most regulated, audited and certified ground handler in Australia.
“The Transport Workers’ Union is seeking to present a false and malicious view of Swissport’s market leading safety record as part of a transparent industrial campaign leading into the next Enterprise Agreement, that will be negotiated over the coming 12 months,” the statement read.
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