Australia's Biggest Airline Grounds Its Entire Fleet 374
An anonymous reader writes "Australia's national airline QANTAS, famous for never having had a fatal crash, has been grounded effective immediately by its management. The grounding is in response to industrial action by union employees and has stranded passengers all over the world, with 108 planes grounded indefinitely. The Australian Government is seeking an urgent industrial relations hearing in a likely bid to suspend the industrial action and halt further damage to the Australian economy."
"Post Tech or GTFO!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Those who object to non-tech stories polluting this site, speak up and don't post AC when you do it.
Enough. We have sufficient ordinary news sites and don't need that distracting bullshit here.
If it's not a relevant TECHNOLOGY or related story, post that shit somewhere else.
You don't need to post it here. We don't need it here.
"Tech or GTFO!"
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The word "technology" is curiously absent from the phrase "News for nerds. Stuff that matters."
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It's implied by the word nerd [yahoo.com]:
"2. A person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but is felt to be socially inept."
Science and occasional math stories, sure. Union disputes in Australia? No.
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"Tech or GTFO"
Re:"Post Tech or GTFO!" (Score:4, Insightful)
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filter your categories appropriately
You raise some good points, but note that this was posted under the "tech" category.
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And when there is no more "News for Nerds", what filter will BRING IT BACK?
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Hey bud.
It's News For Nerds, Stuff that matters.
I visit this site everyday, so I must be a nerd.
My wife is stuck in Sydney because of this, so to me it is 'Stuff the Matters'.
This is a grounding of the ENTIRE airline which is unprecedented, with NO notice (We only have 3 domestic carriers). Thus if you were in transit somewhere around the world (or on a codeshare flight) with QANTAS, you are now stuck.
I think this is newsworthy enough.
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Bloody hell, slugo, don't like the story don't read it and don't comment.
Stories here are menat to be stories of any interest to geeks and nerds, that's any interest at all and, politics and unions and economic et al are of interest.
Bugger you and piss off if you think you can choose for me what will be of interest and what will not. If 'I" repeat 'I' have an interest 'I' will open up the story, check out the article and maybe comment.
You disgust me, censorship freak, you offend me, your reasoning th
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I count 99 fatalities.
It is funny how access to Wikipedia turns us all into rain men. We may not be able to instantly count matches dropped onto the floor, but we can quickly total up how many people died on an airline located half way around the world!
Outsourcing (Score:3)
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Qantas have lost 68million on this already. There are approximately 30,000 workers under their employ, with only 3 of the 11 unions striking and demanding a one dollar an hour increase.
Assuming the _entire_ work force wanted the increase, $68m/30,000/40(hours in a week)/52(weeks in a year)=$1.09 increase per worker per hour
If the increases were going to bankrupt the company, qantas should be looking pretty bankrupt about now.
Qantas domestic is doing just fine, qantas international has been bleeding money fo
No advanced warning? (Score:2)
I think the desire to make this announcement "This is in response to the damaging industrial action by three unions" was more important than keeping their customers informed and their employees happy. If someone is stranded it is because Qantas is playing politics with its customers and screwing its employees.
Re:No advanced warning? (Score:5, Insightful)
...Qantas is playing politics with its customers and screwing its employees.
Quantas is trying to screw the employees. The unions are trying to screw Quantas. The results screw the customers. If the customers are smart, they will vote with their wallets to screw Quantas and the unions.
That is called a cluster fuck.
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The name of the company is QANTAS, not Quantas. It is an acronym for Queensland And Northern Territory Air Service
Derp. The more you know...
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I had to google to find out what "Industrial action" is. The links in TFS are incredibly vague -- what "damaging industrial action" did they ground the fleet for? According to wikipedia it could be
Strike
Occupation of factories
Work-to-rule
General strike
Slowdown (or Go-slow)
Overtime ban
So which one(s) was it? It looks like union busting t
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Awesome isn't it. The employees are wearing red ties so management stops all flights and tells customers the employees are performing "damaging industrial actions".
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Rolling strike and work stoppages, at unannounced locations and times. According to QANTAS' news releases, it's costing the airline about 2 million AUD per day.
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There's no good guys here (Score:3, Informative)
On the one hand, current (and immediately previous) QANTAS management has been woeful, and are now merely reaping what they have sown.
One the other, the employees in question are already on a pretty sweet deal, and asking for more is just raw greed.
Re:There's no good guys here (Score:5, Insightful)
So, don't the other domestic Australian airlines employ people belonging to these unions? Meanwhile Qantas doubles its profits, spends 10 million dollars on a re-branding exercise, and gives a 1.5 million dollar raise to its CEO. Now this current suspension is estimated to be costing them $20 million per day.
If I had to choose a side based on the available evidence, it would not be Qantas' management.
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Don't you know the CEO is very important? The reason planes fly is that airline CEOs do magical rituals in their offices. No rituals == no flying. That is why CEOs are paid more than the people we think are necessary to the airplane's operation.
Re:There's no good guys here (Score:5, Informative)
Qantas employees generally already have higher pay and better conditions than equivalent positions at other domestic carriers (Virgin, Jetstar, Tiger) - and FAR more than carriers in almost any foreign country that you could name. Also, Alan Joyce, though just given a $1.5M raise, voluntarily took a $7M/year pay cut previously. So he's just regaining some of what he previously lost (not that that justifies anything, just pointing it out).
AJ is a bit of a dick, but Qantas really is between a rock and a hard place. Or more accurately, Qantas International (the domestic arm is doing fine). QF international is losing money hand over fist through no real fault of their own. The problems are:
1. Geography: Australia is a terminus when it comes to air travel. You don't travel 'through' Australia to get to anywhere else. So you don't have the advantages of being based in a hub, like places in the Middle East or Asia, which can attract substantial traffic from within their catchment area and ALSO a lot of transit traffic (people just passing through in transit to other locations). Australia is the 'end of the road' so to speak, which makes their potential market much smaller.
2. Australia has an open skies policy these days, which has allowed the likes of Singapore Airlines, Qatar, Emirates, Malaysian Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Etihad to operate Australian services. These are airlines that already have the inherent advantages of being based in hub locations (thus are not as reliant on origin-and-departure traffic as Qantas is). They are also airlines that, due to being based in locations with much lower wages than Australia, have costs in the order of HALF what Qantas has, to operate the same flights. Qantas tickets are therefore more expensive. And as a result, noone buys them - Qantas now has only 20% market share for international flights to/from Australia (and falling).
So, QF international is losing money. Their successful domestic arm has been subsidising it, but that can only continue for so long. So what's the solution? They can either start basing at least some of their core maintenance and piloting operations from a hub somewhere in Asia (Singapore, HK etc.) ... or go out of business. This is what Alan Joyce announced earlier this year as a plan to save QF International - moving some operations offshore and creating a new premium airline in Asia. The unions oppose it - they obviously don't want jobs to be lost within Australia, nor do they want their members to miss out on pay or entitlements. Fair enough, from their perspective.
But what would you have Qantas do? They have no choice - if QF International is to survive at all, they MUST significantly reduce their cost base. That would be impossible to do while keeping all existing jobs in Australia. And even more impossible to do if the unions force them to pay even more. They are competing against foreign carriers whose costs are half as much, remember. What a sad thing it would be if Qantas - the second oldest continuously operating international airline in the world - was forced to close its doors.
There really are two sides to this story - the vilification in the media of Qantas as being greedy, un-Australian etc etc. is to some extent unjustified, as they are really running out of options, and noone can force them to keep operating their international arm at a loss.
Re:There's no good guys here (Score:4, Interesting)
One word ..... Ansett
The same board of directors that ran Ansett sit on the board of Qantas. Read between the lines, cutting cost / slicing up and selling chunks of the business is an attempt for those very same directors to pocket a little extra cash!
Since when did running a business mean you can ruin lives destroy a proud Australian brand? Those parasites sitting on the board are SELLING assets and pocketing commissions in the process, look at what's happening to the frequent flyer program it's going to Jet Star, WTF?
I understand the union strike, it's well placed and frankly if you're a worker whose proud to wear the Qantas uniform and go to work each day then suddenly have his livelihood destroyed and self pride, I'd be there backing you up!
Did you see the eyes on the CEO when he made the announcement, that asswipe is truly butt hurt and so he should be. He didn't expect the unions to bitch slap him for six!
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Qantas employees generally already have higher pay and better conditions than equivalent positions at other domestic carriers (Virgin, Jetstar, Tiger) - and FAR more than carriers in almost any foreign country that you could name. Also, Alan Joyce, though just given a $1.5M raise, voluntarily took a $7M/year pay cut previously. So he's just regaining some of what he previously lost (not that that justifies anything, just pointing it out).
AJ is a bit of a dick
There's an understatement. Does it not even register that he's able to afford to take a $7M/year pay cut? What must he be earning. Also to shut down the airline THE DAY AFTER getting a $1.5M pay rise....I just don't see how anyone can justify that. He should lead by example. If people must sacrifice he shouldn't be taking a pay raise that is equal to the entire salary of 20 of his lesser paid employees. Whether or not any of the union's conditions are met, the man should be sacked. He is incompetent, a hypo
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With respect, the USA doesn't give a shit about WTO requirements unless it is to their advantage. The "free trade" agreement between the USA and Australia for instance prohibits the sale of Australian beef in the USA until 2020 but cans containing US beef can be found in any Australian supermarket. It's a similar situation with wheat, sugar and steel. Of course the Australian government of the time were idiots to accept it and probably de
Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
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Except in this case, it's the actions of a 1%'er bringing the 99% to its knees.
The "boss" (Alan Joyce) just had his pay upped to $5m/yr yesterday... now he's grounded the fleet. Either a genius or a mad-man, maybe both.
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Joyce had his pay upped as per his contract, the labour groups want non-contracted increases. And it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to fulfil those demands per year.
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Alan Joyce will be remembered as the man who killed QANTAS.
Actually - that's his game plan. He has made no secret of the fact he wants to off-shore everything.
He is purposely trashing the brand so that he can transfer all the planes and other assets to setup a new airline based in asia.
He is not bluffing, IMHO qantas has made it's final flight. The only way he will restart services is if he bullies the current government into making his company exempt from Australia's industrial relations laws. (He might do that by making the usual "too big to fail, massive sou
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Here's a little fact for you. You ARE a 1%er. The people who are richer than you are not telling you how to live your life economically, they're the ones who are powering the economy that enables you to. And the only reason you're not living in shit-poor poverty working 18 hour days on a farm like people 150 years ago is because there is a literal army of near slaves working around the world.
The Occupy Wallstreet people are massive hypocrites, complaining about the weathy while wearing the clothes that were
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I think the 99% is just a moniker. What the Occupy movement really seems to be about* is income and opportunity inequality and the political influence of money.
Their goals are more income equality and democracy. Those usually benefit the ones at the bottom the most, so the Occupy is a good thing for those $4000/year workers you are defending.
It's the low income people in the Western World and elsewhere who buy the products from those sweatshops, millionaires wear designer and tailor made clothing. Even if t
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonsense, all of it. I'll pick out just some common points:
a) Economy doesn't work on a "fixed average" principle. The thought that for every $ that I make above some arbitrary average (which one, arithmetic, geometric, median? why?) someone else makes a $ less is just bonkers. Apparently, there's somewhere an assumption in there that the total amount of global wages is coming out of one fixed source, i.e. the same bank account pays all wages on the globe, so whenever I take something out, there's less in it.
But the economy doesn't work that way. Economy is not the product of money storage, it is the process of money flow. The $ I make is not vanishing from anywhere, it is going to go somewhere else, i.e. I will be spending it again. Possibly on some sweatshop product. In other word, some poor working is going to get his $ exactly because I got mine first and could spend it. Yes, I realize he's going to get maybe a cent of the $ I spend. But if I hadn't had that $, he wouldn't even have gotten that cent. I didn't take a $ from him, and frankly, if I hadn't gotten the raise and had not gotten my $, do you really think some poor people somewhere else would have gotten it instead?
b) Being well-off does not disallow you to protest against the injustice you see. Having some justice does not preclude you from demanding real justice. That's a stupid argument. Basically, you could tell anyone who protests against anything today that he should up because somewhere someone else is certainly worse off.
It's a trap. It's a "shup up" strategy. Fortunately, the 99% have finally avoided that trap, which has stopped movements for decades. "Think globally, act locally" was a good principle, but not thought through. If you beat me with a stick, that is not ok just because someone somewhere is getting beaten with a bigger stick. I can still demand you stop beating me, and take action to stop you. The argument "someone else is getting beaten worse" is stupid at best.
c) Protests by the middle class are, historically speaking, a ton more effective than protests by the poor. If you look at revolutions throughout history, the ruling class was overthrown way, way more often by the middle class than by the poor. And most often when the middle class and the poor were united against the ruling class. That is when the rulers become afraid, because usually, they position the middle class as a defensive system against the poor - with arguments like yours. That they should be happy with what they have, because others have less. With the addendum that if they want to keep it, they should defend it against the poor. But when the middle class turns around and says "hey, wait. Why fight the poor? You have more than we do, we could take it and split it up between the poor and us, and a lot of people would be very happy" - that's when palaces get stormed and regimes toppled.
d) Sweatshops have a bad rep, but I dare say it is overrated. Oh, I certainly wouldn't want to work there - but a lot of the poor voluntarily do. There are many who leave their farms and go to the cities in order to work in factories. It's a miserable lot, but it beats the alternatives. And that's what so many of us forget when we compare it to our own lives. Sure it would suck to be a factory worker in China today. But China is lifting several millions of its people out of even worse poverty every year. Sweatshops are how it works. Maybe the alternative would be $250 jeans - but it would also mean more poor people, because if the wages are the same in Europe and China, you'd probably buy the jeans from some European company, and the hypothetical chinese factory worker would not end up having the same wage - he would end up having none.
Yes, our desire to buy stuff cheaply is contributing to low wages elsewhere. However, it is also contributing to there being wages for this stuff at all. And those wages would be higher if we would be paying more, yes. They would also be higher if the 1% had a yearly income of, say, 20 ti
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Sure, as long as 198 other workers are the 99%.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit. It's just luck. There's plenty of people who could work the same 6am to 2am hours, get absolutely no-where and then die from exhaustion, wishing they'd spent more time enjoying their lives instead of slaving it away. They could even do exactly the same thing you're doing, but in a different place and time, and could have completely different results.
I wish you well with your business, but if you're successful, it will all be down to blind luck, being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people, and not the hours you put in.
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Holy Hell. If I were in the same room with you I'd slap you upside the head.
So you're unstable enough that you're willing to assault people you don't agree with? Cute.
Quit whining and become the 1% yourself.
What you're suggesting is mathematically impossible for anymore than 1% of the population. The problem is, when the cost of health care is factored out, wages for nearly everyone else is flat. The US is about 60th in the world in upward mobility.
Also, the Washing Post says entry into the 1% is about $520,000:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/who-are-the-1-percenters/2011/10/06/gIQAn4JDQL_blog.html [washingtonpost.com]
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What you are leaving out is that with inflation, the middle AND the bottom lost purchasing power... for three decades... and were using credit to make up the difference.
The wealthy can't make money if the middle income and lower income stop using credit.
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You chose to hang on two words of a post I made to call all of this out, NOW you claim it doesn't chap your hide?
Considering the news reports, the only people pissing in the streets and crapping on cars are sycodon's straw occupy.
The only 1%ers I actually hate are the crooks in finance that crashed the economy, then financed their bonus checks on the backs of the 99% and now act as if WE owe THEM. As for the rest, I just believe it's time for them to pay their share. Their tax rate is lower that of the peop
Fire them all...fire them (Score:3)
The folks at Qantas or the government should employ Reagan solution: Fire all those striking employees, then immediately advertise their positions at even lower compensation.
With the strike having the potential of affecting the Australian economy, decisive intervention is necessary. I am quite sure these positions once advertised, will get serious responses, even though the unemployment rate of Australia is at about 5%.
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I propose an alternative:
Fire the management, and advertise their new positions at 5% of their current wage.
After all, it's the employees who do the actual work. Most of the people on the top probably can't even competently sweep the floors, let alone fly an airplane.
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The folks at Qantas or the government should employ Reagan solution: Fire all those striking employees, then immediately advertise their positions at even lower compensation.
This isn't a strike. The shutdown is on the orders of the management, who ordered planes already on the taxiway back to the terminals without any warning to passengers and just days ago advised shareholders that negotiations were continuing (though apparently they booked thousands of hotel beds in advance).
But I agree, fire those responsible and advertise their jobs at a lower rate...I think it was fairly crass of the CEO to accept a 72% pay rise under the circumstances anyway.
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It is their game plane, because it means bigger profits through lower expenses. As a traded corp that's what they have to do. Of course, I think the move was still a little over the top.
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What an immoral law.
Not relevant here (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm an aussie and even I don't think this story deserves to be here. Combined with the prominent slashtervizing and other poor quality stories this place is slowly becoming a news ghetto (and apologies to all who live in ghettos)
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Hear, hear!
FYI:US Labor law... (Score:3)
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Well come on now, it's a negotiation. Like trading a house or a car, one guy wants a high price, the other wants a low price. People play the games they can (oh, there's a scratch, you'll save money bc the insulation is better, etc).
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Just a point that "negotiations" on this issue have been ongoing for a year, if not longer, and there have been several previous strikes (all with the appropriate notice periods).
This is an apparently spontaneous action by QANTAS _management_. The Unions have been quite responsible about their actions.
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Management plays games too.
Not as bad as the games the unions try to play in the airline industry. Forcing their way into people's houses, blocking them into their driveways. Claiming "interference" when the airline publicizes the vote date to their employees after the union gets the rules changed to favor them.
Not a Slashdot Story (Score:2)
" ... Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure. ..."
That was the Slashdot 'Quote of the day' displayed when I read this topic (and set out to grumble, which is what this comment is).
I actually don't really agree with the sentiment expressed ... mistakes are key to learning, and often lead us where our tunnel vision won't let us go. But you can't argue that all mistakes have some saintly outcome; some are just warnings that you should stop now and abandon your course. Maybe the random /. quote
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WTF; rest of my post disappeared.
Should Read:
On That Note ...
An airline was shut down by executive order over a labour (as they spell it in Australia) dispute.
This is not a Slashdot Story. Stop approving these or "utter failure" looms ominously.
Strange term for a strike (Score:3)
Fatal JET crash (Score:2)
Found this joke about why QANTAS jets do not crash (Score:3, Funny)
Pilots: Left inside main ti
You've got to be kidding me... (Score:3)
http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/210079/20110908/joyce-s-record-pay-rise-rubs-salt-in-qantas-pilots-wounds.htm [ibtimes.com]
Mr Joyce has increased his annual take home pay to $5 million, with other key executives have increased their multimillion dollar packages by similar ratios.
âoeThe 71 per cent increase comes despite the Qantas share price dipping 16 per cent in the last financial year,â AIPA said.
It also comes at a time when Qantas has announced it will be sacking 1000 Australian workers and shifting local operations to Asia to avoid employing Australians.
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Take a huge raise,
Lay off 1000 employees.
Then shut the airline down when they protest.
Mr. Joyce must be learning how to run a company from Reed Hastings (Netflix).
At $5M QANTAS CEO Joyce is vastly overpaid (Score:4, Informative)
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Not news for nerds. Now go take an ice axe to the head like your hero.
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Someone should take an ice ax to his head. Sooner the better.
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ice axe to the head from orbit.
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Smash the capitalist state! Expropriate the bourgeoisie! Forward to socialism!!!!!!! READ TROTSKY!!!!
Capitalism provides you with what you wear and eat. Capitalism provides you with the internet for you to make a fool of yourself on. Capitalism is not evil, greed and corrupt is and both were rampant among the party leadership in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union proved that state socialism does not work. If you want to redistribute your wealth, do so by your own choice. It's called "charity".
Socialism is about slavery and coercion rather than freedom and good will.
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> The Soviet Union proved that state socialism does not work. If you want to redistribute your wealth, do so by your own choice. It's called "charity".
Charity does not work because it is not sustainable. There are many other ways to redistribute your wealth, such as funding schools or medical research, which are not charity and are more likely to have a long-term positive effect.
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Western Europe social democracies have shown that the right amount of socialism works and works very well. And socialism is not communism, but what would an american hilly billy know about that eh ?
Wrong. Western European countries are not socialist. They practice a for of mixed market economics and even Canada and the US do not have pure capitalism. The military industrial complex is a perfect example of the US having a mixed economy. True capitalism cannot exist because it will destroy itself without some regulation . The Soviet Union was also known and USSR (Union of Socialist Soviet Republics). Every single so-called "communist" country called themselves "socialist". That is state socialism and th
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Regrettably, Western Europe social democracies have shown that the right amount of socialism is definitely less than they've been employing for the last while. It has left them with no money (a surmountable problem, though it means cutbacks), a good sense of citizen entitlement (which means everyone's upset at the cutbacks), and very labor-friendly policies (which leave employers less willing to hire, so if you're a young person looking for a job you're completely and totally screwed right now instead of j
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http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=youth+unemployment+USA+vs+Netherlands [wolframalpha.com]
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The Dutch may be doing better, but France has even higher youth unemployment than the US. At least, according to those two year old Wolfram statistics.
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Qantas never crashed... until now. (Score:2)
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Go google for the Qantas 747 that ran off the end of a runway and had to have it's entire nose replaced by Boeing (so Qantas could continue to say the had never lost an aircraft due to a crash). That little incident cost Qantas more than a replacement aircraft would have.
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They have crashed. After all 1988 is 23 years ago and unsurprisingly a few thing have changed in the since then.
You may also be surprised to hear that contrary to all the other 1988 (and prior) fictional films you are taking as documentaries for current times there's no Berlin Wall anymore. There has also been some other minor events you have missed out on, something on 9/11/11. A few wars. A minor economic glitch. A black President. And so on.
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Qantas has never had a fatal jet airliner accident. Their last plane crash was in 1951, from a propeller powered plane.
Some things have changed. Others have not. (Score:2)
After all 1988 is 23 years ago and unsurprisingly a few thing have changed in the since then.
But can any event involving Qantas over the past two and a half decades be classified as a "crash" or a "death"?
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A 747 overshot a runway in 1999 due to hydroplaning. That can be considered a "crash" by some standards, but it wasn't a flight into terrain situation, and nobody was injured. Other airlines have lost planes and had fatalities in similar situations, which is why you could consider it a crash, though in large part it depends on the airport: that was in Bangkok, which has a large overshot area. A more recent incident of losing a plane, for example, was when Air France lost an A340 in 2005 in Toronto, Canada,
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Its mainly because Australia is a pretty safe place to fly. Traffic density is low. The air is dry. Ice on the ground is almost unknown. Civil aviation bureaucrats are justifiably psycho about safety.
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More accurately, they have never had a fatality in the jet aircraft age. They did have a few fatal accidents in the early days and also lost some planes due to being shot down during WW2.
But yes, they have one of the best safety records and most respected (and highest paid) pilots in the (civil aviation) world.
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If you don't want to read about it, don't click the link. Simple. It may not be "news for nerds" but it's certainly "stuff that matters". Yeah, I could discuss the subject with the idiots on Yahoo News' messageboards, but I prefer conversing with intelligent people once in a while. If I want to talk politics with 2 digit IQ folks I'll go to the tavern.
Rather than bitching about what's posted, why not go to the firehose and vote?
Sheesh.
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but I prefer conversing with intelligent people once in a while
Then what the hell are you doing here?
Are you new here? (Score:2)
...and political strikes are tech news how?
Yes they are, because it gives slashdot editors and readers another chance to talk about how their favorite presidential candidate or political movement would handle this better than anyone else, anywhere, ever.
Though as others have pointed out, if you don't like it, don't read it. Nobody is forcing you to click on the link. You could submit something else to read or just not read slashdot at all.
...no different from employers (Score:2)
unions are... scum... filthy vermin who prey on the weak
Let me guess: They're little better or worse than the monopsonistic employers [wikipedia.org] that cause people to start unions in the first place.
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This isn't 'Grapes of Wrath'. These aren't workers enslaved to the company store, living in company barracks, fighting for basic human rights. They're well-off workers trying to push their benefits further above the market rate.
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This is a standard behaviour for any delays and disruptions to QANTAS operations, regardless of whether it's industrial action or a broken down plane.
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Standard for pretty much any airline, and at least in Europe its a legal requirement tho not sure about other places...
Re:How it should be (Score:4, Interesting)
I hope it happens to you and then you'll see exactly how easy and cheap it is to completely change your career path.
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Does that also include the top-paid jobs? After all, you can easily save a lot by replacing the million-dollar-salary receiving non-pilot with some beggar from Bangladesh, it's not like he's needed to transport passengers...
I am sure Australians will flock to an airline just pretending to be Australian. If they want to see the consequences of running airlines too cheaply, look to Africa.
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1) A "private company" only exists as a fiat of Government: Without laws defining the rights and responsibilities of companies, the term would be meaningless.
2) Planes do not fly themselves. So they own the planes, but you do not "own" people. They are doing what they want with "theirs" by grounding the planes.
3) The third thing they have is a responsibility to their customers. And that is what is being broken hardest here.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not. Does it need to be?
Re: (Score:2)
Both are bad. Unions as a group of employees deciding to cooperatively strike is not a problem. Unions as mandatory guilds with special legal privileges are a huge problem, distorting the market and increasing unemployment.
Businesses do bad things too. They seek special legal protections, too. Both are wrong.
Then the US and EU are obsolute too..... (Score:4)
Unions may have been necessary once, but now the produce nothing but trouble.
So do you want unions abolished? Also, your condemnation doesn't properly apply to unions any more than it does to governments, trade associations, affirmative action groups, militaries, universities, etc. Do you want every one of those organizations abolished, as well? Once people have some power they become deluded enough to invent reasons they should continue holding that level of influence even when many of their aims have been met. They become complacent and guide their attention to unworthy targets. It almost never happens any other way; there's a reason Cincinnatus is a legend to this day, and became a major role model in the forming of the United States.
The solution to greed and complacency is checks and balances, such that an unstable equilibrium can be maintained between competing claimants - including the public - to political and economic influence. Just because that system is no longer tuned correctly doesn't mean it's fundamentally wrong. The total destruction of any organization retaining more power than it currently needs will just leave a nation spending more effort on destroying than on building.