’Messy day’ as Qantas workers strike

Strike action is causing more and more domestic flights to be cancelled on Thursday.

Qantas union workers are set to walk off the job at Melbourne Airport on Thursday, the first step in a larger nationwide strike against the airline giant.

Flight cancellations out of Melbourne and Sydney have been mounting on Thursday morning.

As of 8.30am, 10 flights out of Sydney have been cancelled, and 10 leaving Melbourne have been canned. There have been earlier flights cancelled which are no longer showing on the airports’ online departures boards.

Adding to the woes in Melbourne is a tech outage at the bag drop for Qantas subsidiary Jetstar.

Posting on social media about 6.45am on Thursday, one man said a Jetstar tech outage at Melbourne Airport had slowed check in considerably.

“Departure terminal already filling up. Going to be a messy day. Checking bags in manually (flight by flight) on baggage carousel in arrivals,” the man posted.

The Qantas Engineers’ Alliance, a union made up of the Australian Workers Union, Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and Electrical Trades Union, say the industrial action will begin in Melbourne and spread to all major airports across the country during the next two weeks.

“It is highly likely to affect Qantas flights in all major capitals,” the union said on Wednesday evening.

AMWU national secretary Steve Murphy said the airline’s engineers were “undervalued, underpaid and underappreciated”.

“If you’ve had a bad Qantas experience, well that’s nothing compared to how Qantas makes their workers feel every day,” he said.

“Our highly skilled members deserve fair wages for the incredible work they do to keep us all safe in the air.”

The employees taking part in the industrial action are from Qantas’ Aircraft Maintenance Engineers teams.

The enterprise agreements for the 1100 employees who make up the teams expired in June 2024 and the union is pushing for a 5 per cent pay bump per year plus a 15 per cent first year payment.

The workers will pursue a range of work stoppages at airports around Australia on Thursday and then next Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

While the union warned of flight disruptions, a Qantas spokesman said the company was prepared.

“We’re putting contingencies in place and don’t currently expect this industrial action to have an impact on customers,” the spokesman said.

“We’ve held a series of meetings with the unions and made progress on a number of items.

“We want to reach an agreement that includes pay rises and lifestyle benefits for our people.”