ASTA Fights Back

It wasn’t too long ago when the very mention of the Government Aircraft Factories caused most regional aerospace industry people to grimace.

In fairness to the poetically named GAF though, most of its problems were as a direct result of its bureaucratic parentage. Any organisation that is totally government-owned and scrupulously run under stringent Public Service guidelines must by definition be industrially moribund. However, with the virtual kiUing off of the old GAF in 1986 and its replacement by a new and in,novative profit motivated Aerospace Technologies of Australia, the tide has turned and nowadays a more positive atmosphere exists at its sprawling Avalon and Fisherman’s Bend plants.

Gone are the plethora of restrictive work practices, low productivity and even lower morale, as a new and hard charging management, headed by former BHP senior executive, Mr George Stuart, moved to bring the new organisation industrially into the modern era. Consequently, as a result of two years of reorganisation, the workforce has been trimmed from around 2,300 to a present day 1,500 while the all important functions of marketing and sales are now at last getting the priority that they consistently lacked in the days of GAF.

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