Aust, airline dispute deepens

Press, 11 September 1989, Page 10

Aust, airline dispute deepens

NZPA-AAP Melbourne The Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, yesterday described a decision by the Australian Flight Attendants’ Association not to supply 140 flight attendants for chartered planes as irresponsible.

He said the flight attendants must expect that other parties in their dispute would respond to that decision. Mr Hawke said the main issue was whether an already privileged group of pilots would be able to go outside the system by holding a gun to the head of the airlines and in doing so be able to wreck the Australian economy. “To stop that happening I will do everything to ensure the Australian economy is protected,” he

said. The A.F.A.A. said on Saturday that meetings of flight attendants around Australia had voted overwhelmingly against a resolution to direct the union’s federal secretary to sign agreements with the airlines aimed at having some flight attendants work chartered foreign flights. The A.F.A.A.’s federal industrial officer, Maurice Alexander, said: “We have been threatened by the airlines with stand-downs and it is their prerogative

to take us to the Industrial Relations Commission.” Mr Alexander said any stand-downs could create another dispute. An Ansett spokesman, Tony Hill, said it was “rubbish” that attendants would be stood down. Ansett has chartered two America West Boeing 7375, which arrived in Melbourne , yesterday. Australian Airlines has chartered three Spanish 7375. Ansett, America West’s single largest shareholder

with a 20 per cent, interest, said it planned to use some Australian flight attendants when the America West Boeings went into service in the middle of next week. The A.F.A.A. has said only 140 flight attendants would have had work on the foreign chartered flights. Mr Hawke should stop “ranting” about the pilots’ dispute and pursue a calm and rational solution to it, the Opposition’s industrial relations spokesman, Fred Chaney, said yesterday.