Qantas has been paying its New Zealand pilots up to 40% less than its Australian pilots, even although they wear the same uniform and fly the same routes.
Positions previously held by Qantas pilots are being lost to Jetconnect pilots as Qantas pay and conditions are much inferior here.
Despite being set up to undertake domestic flights within New Zealand, Jetconnect now operates 154 flights between Australia and New Zealand every week and is effectively an operating division of Qantas, says the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU).
Its New Zealand pilots wear Qantas uniforms, have Qantas staff numbers, and fly Qantas aircraft with travel routes determined by Qantas.
The ACTU says that where workers are doing the same job as Australian workers and in actual fact replacing Australian workers, Australian work legislation should apply to them.
The gap between Australian and New Zealand wages has grown by more than $50 a week since November 2008. The government has no ideas or plan about how to address this gap, other than to further reduce workers rights.
New Zealand has become a desirable destination for Australian companies who want to pay workers less.
For once NZ is the place where cheap Labour is outsourced to
So much for catching Australia, we are under cutting them 
Oh – lets all legislate against anyone being paid lesss that Australian counterparts – that will solve al our problems – just like raising the youth wage to equal the minimum wage solved youth unemployment – oh hang on – it made it worse.
Hey we have an FTE with China – and they are a bigger country so maybe instead we should legislate to ensure the pilots get paid only the same as chinese pilots.
Yet again the Labour MPs introduce futile arguements. Turn arounds in low wages do not happen overnight – but are long term plans and as a result of structural changes in the economy which cannot happen easily or quickly (even less so in am MMP environment). One thing I am 100% certain of is that the gap would be even wider if Labour were in Government – but no chance of that hapening for a very very long time.
Low wages in NZ are the result of a deliberate transfer of the share of GDP paid in wages to banks, shareholders and assorted financial burglars since 1984. Wage and salary earners share now 44% and dropping rapidly. Australian wages are higher simply because union power in Australia has prevented this wealth transfer. It is a mystery why NZ business people support this as it has resulted in much less money being spent in NZ to support local business. Wage earners, SME owners and beneficiaries spend their money close to home. Big business shareholders take it to tax havens!
Qantas aren’t the only guilty party – just look at AirNZ. They pay a whole lot of cabin crew less as they are employed by “Zeal320″ – a company which is seemingly set up to pay workers a lot less than they’d get if they worked for AirNZ proper. The planes look the same, passengers travel on an airnz ticket, the crew wear airnz uniforms.
It shows the need for industry wide bargaining…
Those workers should quit and go to an airline that will pay them better… Or move to Australia and do the same job…
JMH, yes that is a strategy, but really, workers should not have to turn their lives upside down and immigrate just to get a fair deal.
At the moment NZ is in a race to the bottom.
And our homegrown corporates aren’t any better, Air NZ with this pay differential, Fonterra with their poisoned baby powder partners etc.
MOnty said:
My own tea leaves read quite differently to yours.
But at least I don’t place 100% certainty in them, that would be daft.
@Loota, take that argument to the extreme, if they had unions in the Congo should pilots there get paid the same as Qantas pilots, when that would bankrupt or shink the company they work for and reduce the amount of people in jobs..?
Or should those Congolese pilots (with their considerate skill) move to NZ and get a job with Air NZ, just like NZ Qantas pilots should apply for a job out of Melbourne and move there…
People have to immigrate for jobs all the time, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t aim to catch Aussie but it is impractical for us to try and match them overnight as Darien Fenton seems to be suggesting here, it took us a generation for us to fall behind, it will take that long to catch up…
As for the final sentence:
“New Zealand has become a desirable destination for Australian companies who want to pay workers less.”
Great, higher employment for us until our economy grows as we teach our citizens to save and invest in ourselves to catch Aussie…
loota – of course I am sure that the wage gap would have widened if the Country did not evict Labour – and the economy would be in free fall as Cullen would have borrowed and hoped. God knows wat he would have done with his train set – and taxes would be increased and the number of skilled people leaving NZ would have been at an all time hight. Labour had no facility for dealing with the massive economic crisis. Hell the Tradeables went into recession in abour 2005 thanks to Cullen. And exactly how much debt did Cullen pay off – or rather is it only the % of debt to GDP that decreased.
“Trevor Mallard says:
July 15, 2010 at 9:11 pm
The NZEI made claims based on teachers with better qualifications getting paid more – the government agreed. Get over it.”
http://blog.labour.org.nz/index.php/2010/07/13/600k-for-primary-principals/
To be fair to Trev here is the link so as you can follow the discussion.
This was the response when I broached the subject regarding Cert of Teaching to that of a degree, with the $12+k difference in pay. For Darien as your headline “Same Job Same Uniform Different Pay”. There is approx 30% of primary teachers in this situation. So I take it that you would be supportive of “same job, same uniform same pay and even same job experience” .As the NZEI has started this process of equality of job = pay.
I await hopefully a more supportive response to this issue, or someone giving a valid reason other than that is what the union wanted, a union affiliated with the Labour Party.