(Above: David Rowe in the Australian Financial Review. Sorry, no link, paywall).Oh dear, it's the first day without the commentariat at The Australian.
Will the pond, will the world, suffer withdrawal symptoms? Will the craving be too strong, and the weakness set in, and then comes a rush to peek under - or over - the digital paywall fence, and satisfy the craving with a bit of commentariat madness you can only find in daily on parade in News Ltd's exceptionalist rag?
Last Thursday, after media reports that Qantas was going to shed up to 2000 jobs to cope with the doubling of its fuel costs, the airline responded by describing this as "pure speculation". Barely hours after this response was published in the next morning's newspapers, Qantas announced it would shed 1500 staff and drop plans to hire 1200 more. The coming year will see the golden egg of the frequent flyer scheme being floated, accompanied by a decimation of staff numbers.
Qantas enters the oil shock era as one of the world's strongest, largest and best-managed airlines. But the last four times this once doggedly loyal Qantas frequent flyer went to Europe he flew on Air China, Etihad and Finnair.
In the end it is not management or the staff or the unions who will determine the fate of Qantas, but the people who pay the fares, and loyalty has its limits.
It is worse than ever. The Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association has called for the public not to fly Qantas.
I don't know who is providing strategic advice to Joyce and the Qantas board but announcing a $2 million pay rise for the chief executive, to $5 million a year, within a month of announcing 1000 staff layoffs was a corporate brain explosion. It's not the only misstep.
Yep, it was only in September that it was revealed that Alan Joyce copped a whopping 71% increase in his total pay, as a reward for Qantas's share price falling 16% over the same year, but it wasn't just Joyce:
All of Qantas’s senior leadership team received a boost to their total pay in a year in which the company more than doubled its annual net profit to $249 million. (here)
Talk about Animal Farm. And talk about a standard bout of Orwellian blather to justify the pay increase:
The chairman of the airline’s remuneration committee, James Strong, said in the annual report that the board had achieved ‘‘what we believe is an appropriate mix of fair reward, retention of key executives and alignment with the interests of the shareholders of Qantas’’.
‘‘This has been a year where company performance has been good relative to the challenges faced, and where a strong performance by management has produced what is, in the circumstances, a satisfactory profit outcome,’’ he said.
Sure, management might have totally alienated staff, but that takes a strong performance, and a very nice kick in the pay packet ...
Too many leaders abdicate their responsibility for morale within their companies. You probably didn't grow up wanting to be a therapist, yet you control much of the psychological climate within your company. Good morale is contagious. Bad morale spreads even faster!
It's not appropriate to yell and intimidate. You need to work with your people in an atmosphere of respect. Your job is to support them in doing their jobs, which ultimately serves customers. You can't change all the external issues that create stress. But your people will appreciate being heard, respected, and involved, and will respond to your efforts to improve things.
As I was leaving that Qantas international flight last December, the flight service director, who I'd not encountered on the flight, thanked me for the positive things I had recently written about Qantas and its staff.
Those were the days. Before the war.
Uh huh. Those were the days. Back before the war, when Sheehan flew on Air China, Etihad and Finnair, and battled mightily with the Qantas FF system:
By all accounts, Alan Joyce, the new head of Qantas, is a likeable man with an excellent record as an airline executive. Yet his first week as the chief executive of Australia's international carrier and national icon has unfolded like a bad Irish joke. Joyce has managed to convey an impression of incoherence embroiled by treachery and exacerbated by naivety.
Who knows, because today we can at least brood about the peculiar case of Paul "generally grumpy" Sheehan, as he broods about Qantas and loyalty in Loyalty no longer its own reward.
Sheehan presents himself as a generally loyal member of the Qantas passenger fraternity, traumatised by an international flight about a year ago:
I might have treated this as an aberration, a hazard of travelling long-haul economy class, but the experience turned out to be the beginning of the end of my years of loyalty to Qantas. It has since become obvious that Qantas staff, from the pilots down, regard passengers with contempt. Every time they are in dispute with management over pay and conditions, Qantas customers are used as cannon fodder.
Indeed. It's not the airline it once was, but could it be that Sheehan treats his readers' memories as cannon fodder?
Indeed. It's not the airline it once was, but could it be that Sheehan treats his readers' memories as cannon fodder?
You see, there was Sheehan scribbling way back on July 21 2008 in Qantas burns a precious resource:
Qantas enters the oil shock era as one of the world's strongest, largest and best-managed airlines. But the last four times this once doggedly loyal Qantas frequent flyer went to Europe he flew on Air China, Etihad and Finnair.
In the end it is not management or the staff or the unions who will determine the fate of Qantas, but the people who pay the fares, and loyalty has its limits.
Yes, loyalty has its limits, even for the once doggedly loyal, so much so that it seems that loyalty can be abandoned in 2008, and then sustained so much that it has to be abandoned again in 2010 and 2011.
The pond has never had the same problem, having abandoned the frequently and cynically rejigged Frequent Flyer program a long time ago. After all, loyalty has its limits ...
Having established the wide-ranging limits to his loyalty - much like Sydney people can spend hours moaning about public transport and taxi drivers - Sheehan spends his new column brooding about the wayward ways of Qantas staff.
It seems that the safety issues are all the fault of the engineers:
Shocking. All the more so as they seem to be of one voice with Sheehan, who proposes that the public not fly Qantas. Now that's a knockdown case of loyalty:
This is the same union that waged an industrial campaign against Qantas for months in 2008 and has since provided a constant drip-feed of negative stories to the media about safety issues at Qantas. Given that engineers are responsible for safety, I am not flying Qantas.
Uh huh. Actually the pond's foolish impression was that there was a constant drip-feed of negative stories to the media about safety issues at Qantas because engines were inclined to blow up, or planes returned to port, or passengers texted irritation about being stuck like sardines inside a tin can on the ground, or ... well there's been a relentless series of stories, usually accompanied by a media request "were you a passenger on this flight, can you tell us more?" (Go on Country Liberals MLA Adam Giles tell us all about Qantas plane makes emergency landing in Darwin).
Uh huh. Actually the pond's foolish impression was that there was a constant drip-feed of negative stories to the media about safety issues at Qantas because engines were inclined to blow up, or planes returned to port, or passengers texted irritation about being stuck like sardines inside a tin can on the ground, or ... well there's been a relentless series of stories, usually accompanied by a media request "were you a passenger on this flight, can you tell us more?" (Go on Country Liberals MLA Adam Giles tell us all about Qantas plane makes emergency landing in Darwin).
Perhaps the only passengers left on Qantas planes are engineers texting and messaging their constant drip-feed of negative stories to a harassed media?
Never mind, it's really just a chance for Sheehan to go into his standard rant about the unions and how they're ruining the world, peddling the standard management line about how well the pilots are being paid, and how the airline is down to its last dollar because of outdated work practices (well last dollar after senior management has finished at the trough).
It's only after Sheehan's well into the rant that he has something of a commentariat brain explosion, and pauses to consider other matters:
Yep, it was only in September that it was revealed that Alan Joyce copped a whopping 71% increase in his total pay, as a reward for Qantas's share price falling 16% over the same year, but it wasn't just Joyce:
Talk about Animal Farm. And talk about a standard bout of Orwellian blather to justify the pay increase:
The chairman of the airline’s remuneration committee, James Strong, said in the annual report that the board had achieved ‘‘what we believe is an appropriate mix of fair reward, retention of key executives and alignment with the interests of the shareholders of Qantas’’.
‘‘This has been a year where company performance has been good relative to the challenges faced, and where a strong performance by management has produced what is, in the circumstances, a satisfactory profit outcome,’’ he said.
Sure, management might have totally alienated staff, but that takes a strong performance, and a very nice kick in the pay packet ...
According to Sheehan, the fish is rotting from the tail up, but the oldest saw in management circles is that A Fish Rots From The Head Down:
Too many leaders abdicate their responsibility for morale within their companies. You probably didn't grow up wanting to be a therapist, yet you control much of the psychological climate within your company. Good morale is contagious. Bad morale spreads even faster!
It's not appropriate to yell and intimidate. You need to work with your people in an atmosphere of respect. Your job is to support them in doing their jobs, which ultimately serves customers. You can't change all the external issues that create stress. But your people will appreciate being heard, respected, and involved, and will respond to your efforts to improve things.
Indeed. Who wrote that nonsense ...
We'd urge a course in Management 101 protocols on Field Marshall grumpy Sheehan, except he spends the rest of his column dragging up Ansett (for the wrong reasons), blaming the Federal Government (why does the commentariat always see government with a big G as the solution?), blaming the unions and blaming industrial attrition, as if industrial attrition only comes from the tail of the fish ...
As a parting shot, Sheehan explains at length how he caught a coach to Canberra and enjoyed the experience, and then he delivers this anecdote:
Those were the days. Before the war.
Uh huh. Those were the days. Back before the war, when Sheehan flew on Air China, Etihad and Finnair, and battled mightily with the Qantas FF system:
When I tried going via Singapore for 60,000 points using the old scheme (then flying on a budget carrier back to Bali), there were no problems getting a seat to Singapore in October. Getting back, there was only one flight available all month, three days after I wanted to travel, via Perth, where there was a five-hour overnight layover, plus $371 in taxes and surcharges. Purgatory was upgraded to hell. (Qantas burns a precious resource).
Uh huh. Hell! In 2008!
Well can can say one thing about that Flight Services Director, pretending to read Paul Sheehan. What a schmoozer, and neither Sheehan nor him aware of what Sheehan had really written about Qantas ...
So if the unions want some further references on Alan Joyce, perhaps they should revert to Paul Sheehan, scribbling furiously back in December 2008 in Qantas-BA merger a bad Irish joke, replete with his standard Celt bashing:
Oh and let's remember Sheehan on Geoff Dixon in the same piece:
... while he was furiously cutting costs to ensure the long-term survival of Qantas, and record profits, he was paid almost $12 million during his final year. So he fought to the last drop of everyone else's blood, while earning more than twice as much as the chief executives of most of the world's other leading airlines. It makes him look greedy, even if he is not. And Dixon's final legacy, the proposed merger with BA, looks worse.
So it goes. Who'd be worker at Qantas. Or a passenger.
There's only one thing that might be worse, being a regular reader of Sheehan, who routinely does a Walt Whitman impression of being large, and able to embrace all kinds of contradictions ...
(Below: the glory days, long gone).
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