SUNSTATE Pilot Federation

New Sunstate Pilot Council

Following the new council meeting in December 2022, the Sunstate Pilot Council (SPC) was soon faced with further change following the Qantas decision to recommence the movement of pilots on the ‘mainline hold list’.

The immediate impact was that one of newly elected Council members, Clinton Shiell, obtained his start date and has now resigned from the Council. The Council wish him well in his career and hope the vacancy becomes filled in the second half of the year.

The SPC is now made up by committee members Jarrod Blaker (Chair), Anthony Berko (Vice Chair), Richard Copland, Jason Dadge, Dan Lyons, Louise Pole and Russell Thompson.

Enterprise Bargaining

There have been a number of meetings with company representatives during the first half of 2023. These have been in addition to a set of member meetings held at every Sunstate base in late March/early April.

At one of the first meetings with the company it was explained that their simple adherence to a wages policy would not in any way meet the aspirations of the pilot group and that there had to be a recognition that the pilot group was facing real cost of living pressures and real employment alternatives.

Consequently, it was explained that unless the company seriously addressed loyalty, retention payments and increased years of service across the board, then any acceptance of an EA by the pilot group would be highly unlikely.

The company was also forewarned that they would have to address their ongoing practice of keeping a large number of their pilots close to the Award rates, as this in no way would aid retention of pilots in the current climate.

The negotiating environment has recently become more intense following the company writing to the AFAP to seek our approval for them to alter their labour agreement and recruit an additional 60 non-Australian pilots and 15 simulator instructors in QantasLink over five years.

In light of this admission from the company that they couldn’t recruit and retain pilots into QantasLink, the last negotiating meeting was solely focussed on the pilot team strongly reinforcing that the difficulty was down to the unattractive salaries within QantasLink.

It was forcibly pointed out that as a first step it was essential that the QantasLink pay structure was fixed before other negotiating topics would be addressed.

The net effect of this has been the company has cancelled the negotiating meeting in May whilst they reassess their position in light of the strong message from the Sunstate negotiating team. It is hoped this will result in a meaningful offer being tabled in the second half of 2023.

Foreign Pilot Recruitment

QantasLink management wrote to the AFAP in April to inform us the company was seeking to recruit foreign pilots. The rationale given was that the release of pilots to Qantas Mainline and the over-reliance on incoming graduates was not sustainable.

The AFAP strongly rejected this argument with the following extract from our letter of DATE? to the company succinctly summarising the true reason behind the company’s recruitment and retention problems:

While the company has responded by effectively reiterating their position, the SPC will remain firmly opposed to this effort by Qantas to artifically keep the salary levels in QantasLink uncompetitive.