In a stinging stream of criticism last week, Australian Senator Tony Sheldon accused Qantas Airways of being “mongrels” and “the sharp part of the knife going through people’s workplace rights”, adding that “big corporate gorillas like (Qantas CEO) Alan Joyce are hoarding all the bananas and not sharing them out”.
Qantas has since responded with a page on its website dedicated to debunking each of the MP’s individual claims.
“Senator Tony Sheldon seems to have his own agenda,” the airline said in a statement.
“This kind of rhetoric seems to borrow heavily from his time as head of the Transport Workers Union, with a lot of his comments similar to what he was saying about Qantas a decade ago. The difference is, he’s now a Senator in the Australian Parliament elected to represent the people of New South Wales and not focus disproportionately on a single company.”
This year, Sheldon has tweeted almost 100 times about his dissatisfaction with Qantas and called for the airline to testify before several parliamentary enquiries.
“Oddly, he didn’t mention the fact (that) Qantas returned to being Australia’s most reliable airline in October. Or that we have hired and trained thousands of people into well-paid careers over the past six months,” the airline responded.
Sheldon also told Sky News that the airline was compromising safety by removing people from baggage handling and other critical safety areas. However, Qantas maintained the numbers of operational safety incidents and workplace injuries were both now lower than pre-COVID.
The Senator stated that the airline had an old fleet and was not investing in new aircraft, whereas earlier this year, Qantas made the largest aircraft order in Australian history, with new aircraft arriving almost every month.
The carrier also disputed the accusation of price gouging, insisting that fares were high due to high travel demand, capacity constraints, and very high fuel costs: “Our group fuel bill will be approximately AUD5bn (R57,4bn) this year – AUD1bn (R11,5bn) more than pre-COVID, even though we’re doing 30% less international flying.”
While Sheldon added that Qantas was “waging war on middle-class Australia”, the airline pointed out that its average non-executive salary was more than AUD100 000 (R1,15m), making it one of the highest paying companies in Australia.
The airline also pointed out that it was offering 3% annual pay rises and the opportunity for AUD11 000 (R126 000) in bonuses and incentives, with salary increases and benefits altogether worth more than AUD400m (R4,6bn). “We’re also investing AUD400m in customer initiatives – new lounges, more frequent flyer seats – and AUD200m (R2,3bn) to ensure we maintain our improved operational performance,” it said.
Qantas has promised to update the page on its website in response to further claims by Sheldon should he continue denigrating the airline.
