Qantas Cuts Reflect Boom And Bust Cycle

Qantas Cuts Reflect Boom and Bust Cycle of Aviation

The loss of over three and a half thousand jobs at Qantas, eventually a similar number at the CAA and probably a thousand more between ATI and Australian this winter reflects the perennial boom and bust cycle that afflicts aviation.

A decade ago similar redundancies were being taken by airline workforces around the world just as they had been many times before as the general economic cycle swung from prosperity to decline. For Qantas, there was little it could do but to resort to what by any yardstick would be termed as significant cost cutting in order to be aole to survive the immediate future. The primary remedy was to cut excess manpower which had grown from 15,596 in 1988 to well over 20,000 by late last year.

The recommendations of the long awaited Qantas/Coopers & Lybrand report, announced during early June, see the axing of 3,651 positions by this September. From a peak workforce of 20,061in late 1990, the cuts will bring QF back to something in the order of 17,138. Trimming, primarily in the executive ranks during the latter stages of last year, had already seen 680 positions vacated by early June whilst the remainder will have been effected by next month.

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