QANTAS engineers have returned to work after a two-hour strike, involving more than a thousand workers around the country.
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TVTranscript
00:00Well, we saw Qantas workers return back to their posts just before 9 o'clock this morning.
00:07They were actually waving some of their union flags and chanting as a small group of them
00:13returned to their posts, basically telling customers here in the arrivals hall at Melbourne
00:20Airport and the departures area as well that they are the ones that keep passengers safe
00:26and that is why they demand a better wage.
00:30Now we also saw other workers around the country take that two hour stop work for basically
00:39a real message to be sent to Qantas according to them.
00:44Some of them rallied outside the Qantas headquarters in Sydney and they're demanding a better pay
00:50deal.
00:51They say that they want pay rises of between 4 to 5 per cent per year but that they want
00:56that 15 per cent up front and they say the reason that they need that 15 per cent up
01:01front is because they have endured pay freezes for many years and they also say that they
01:07are the workers that kept Qantas' brand name and reputation as one of the safest airline
01:14carriers around the world during times of COVID and they were also the ones that were
01:19put on JobKeeper for 4 to 12 months as well.
01:24They say that they have been forced to do this as a result of Qantas refusing to return
01:29to the negotiating table and putting a pay cap of 3 per cent across the business.
01:36We heard earlier from Steve Murphy who spoke to ABC News Breakfast, he is the National
01:41Secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and he says that this two hour
01:47stoppage is not the last of what we've seen of industrial action.
01:52We have strike action planned over the next two weeks that our delegates have been planning
01:56out after talking to our members.
01:59We would prefer not to take it, our preference is not to be on industrial action while it's
02:02very inconvenient for the public, the people that are most inconvenienced are those workers
02:06that have to lose pay in order to get a decent pay rise.
02:09So our preference is that Qantas comes back to the table and make sure that workers don't
02:13feel undervalued, underpaid or underappreciated after that.
02:17So that's Steve Murphy from the AMWU, threatening more strike action, this of course started
02:22on Thursday and this was seen as a bit of an escalation using these line maintenance
02:28engineers and they are the people who are responsible for towing and marshalling aircraft
02:34and importantly conducting those safety checks, those turnaround checks when planes land in
02:41order to ensure that they're safe enough to take off again as well.
02:45So he said that they have a very important role to play.
02:49At the moment what we actually saw after 7 o'clock there were only about three delays
02:53that were listed on Qantas' departure board here and we don't know whether or not they
02:59were in relation to this stoppage or not but Qantas put out a statement saying that they
03:05had come up with some contingencies to put in place to ensure that no journeys were disrupted
03:11for passengers.
03:13They also said that over the past four days of this action there have been no disruptions
03:19and any of the flight delays that might have been caused have been due to other reasons
03:24like weather but obviously we're going to have to wait to see what comes next in this
03:29ongoing dispute.