Airline and staff reach agreement

Press, 5 December 1981, Page 6

Airline and staff reach agreement

PA Auckland Air New Zealand and its combined staff group have come to an agreement over surplus staff. The agreement includes extended periods of leave without pay for employees who chose to take it. The agreement, understood to have been reached this week, comes after a considerable reduction in staff numbers over the last six months. The total number of staff has been reduced by nearly 5 per cent since March 31, from 8798 to 8359 at the end of October. The agreement with union and staff groups provides for the identification of surplus staff by the joint staff-airline manpower deployment group. Where practicable, arrangements will be made to retrain these staff for other jobs within the airline. A short and a long-term period of leave without pay will be available for staff.

The short-term period will be up to three months, the long-term up to two years and possibly more in certain cases. At the finish of their leave without pay, employees will be guaranteed re-employ-ment in the airline, though not necessarily in the jobs they left. These provisions follow fairly closely those suggested by the combined staff group when the talks began more than a month ago. Before taking leave without pay, an employee must have taken all holidays owed. The reduction is noted in a quarterly bulletin published within the airline. It says that since September 30, a further 75 staff have retired or left through the company's early retirement scheme. This brings the total who have accepted the early retirement provisions to more than 325 since the programnle was set up last February.