Air N.Z. staff to ‘hear soon’

Press, 5 June 1982, Page 3

Air N.Z. staff to ‘hear soon’

PA Auckland The first Air New Zealand employees to be laid off under the recovery programme are expected to be told in about four or five weeks. Talks will be held next week, on Wednesday. Thursday. and Friday, between management and the combined staff and union group on redundancy settlement conditions. Meanwhile, as Wednesday’s message sank in, staff were beginning to assess their situations.

The number of “lay-offs" — people who will be told they will have to go — will be considerably less than first impressions. Normally, the airline has a staff turnover every year of about 6 per cent. Of about 1000 employees to be shed this year, some 200 to 300 are expected to be

people who would have left in anv case. ,

The airline also appears to be placing some reliance on what it calls "voluntary decisions" — people who had considered leaving and who may decide to take the “jump”£ earlier than they would -otherwise have done because of uncertainty about the future.

A sampling of attitudes within the company yesterday produced widely varying reactions.

The feeling of acceptance was more marked at head office than in the engineering base at the airport. Attitudes among white-col-lar workers were that the sooner staff reductions were made, • and the uncertainty taken out of the situation, the better for everybody concerned. There was concern that the process would be slowed up by unions — “that speedy

action would be frustrated."

A shop steward at the engineering base said that the feeling was "extremely emotive."

The Auckland engineers had agreed to work strictly within the combined union and staff group.'and were angry that Christchurch engineers J “were jumping up and down making statements to the news media.”

However, as one engineer pointed out, “in spite of all the tough talk from the unions, there is no sign of their fighting the redundancies." Asked if Air New Zealand was concerned about industrial delaying actions, a company spokesman said there was no sign of this so far. "All we can say is that it is the only proper course of action if we are to extricate ourselves from our problems — the unions are also aware of this,” he said.