If you have ever flown in a Qantas plane there’s a chance Mark has been one of the engineers who got you safely into the sky, and home again.
As a 30-year veteran of the airline’s engineering team, Mark* has kept thousands of planes in top condition.
“I’ve always loved aircraft. My father worked at Qantas so Qantas is in my blood,” says Mark, who grew up under the flight path, watching in awe as those giant planes roared past while he played in his Sydney back yard.
“There are multiple people like me whose parents and even grandparents worked at Qantas and it always felt like a family thing.”
The Qantas family took care of each other, Mark says, and working for the national carrier was always far more than just a job.
“From day one I’ve thought 'well, this is bloody awesome' and I've poured blood, sweat and tears into my job” he says, describing long nights working in the cold and rain to make sure an aircraft takes off before curfew. "I don’t begrudge the difficult days. I saw it as a job for life and it felt as if the loyalty went both ways.”
But as Qantas engineers begin industrial action on Thursday — with a strategy to delay the start of each shift by one minute — Mark plans to join them. He no longer believes that loyalty flows in both directions.
The one-minute strike is to protest Qantas's inaction over negotiations for a 12 per cent pay rise over four years, equivalent to 3 per cent a year, and is designed to send a message to management: patience has run out.
Another problem for Qantas
The engineers' strike over wages comes on the same day Qantas announced revenue had jumped 54 per cent from 2021 but a full-year net loss of $860 million, and in the same week management attempted to win back customers disgruntled over delays and lost baggage with $50 travel vouchers.
To anyone scoffing that a one-minute strike is hardly worth it, Steve Purvinas, the federal secretary of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers’ Association (ALAEA), says the stoppage reminds Qantas "there is another party negotiating here".
As inflation rises, Purvinas argues “3 per cent per annum would be a fair ask for anyone”. If the one-minute stoppage is ineffective the union has plans to go further including overtime bans.
“We can have our say by withdrawing our labour and we are going to do that, for one minute,” he says, adding the administrative hassle of docking employees for one minute of work adds further burden on Qantas.
Mark points out engineers have accepted Qantas’s requests for wage freezes or minimum increases on multiple occasions over the years, and have not had a pay rise since 2019.
“Whatever else is happening around the world the company has said 'things aren’t looking real good at the moment can you guys help us out and accept a one year wage freeze',” he says. “Generally, everyone goes 'yeah', because we want the company to succeed and because it’s in our best interests to keep our jobs.”
But will industrial action work this time?
The union is firing a warning shot, says Greg Bamber, a professor at Monash Business School and co-author of a book on how airlines can improve their performance by engaging employees.
“We’ve got inflation on the one hand and very little growth in wages on the other unless you happen to be in the senior executive suites where there still seem to be fairly lavish bonuses being paid,” he says. “That’s a discordant message.”
Bamber says the step to industrial action is in response to Qantas’s “determination to play hardball with the various elements of its workforce and not work in a more cooperative way”.
Tony Webber, an aviation sector analyst and former chief economist at Qantas, agrees. “How will Qantas react to industrial action? The same way they’ve always reacted which is very, very aggressively.”
Qantas has called the strike action “extremely disappointing” and a spokesman said "these token one-minute stoppages won’t have any impact on customers or our operations".
It’s not just about money
For Mark, striking is motivated by seeking recognition and respect for the expertise engineers give to a high-pressure role that is vital in maintaining the airline’s famous safety record.
And that comes with some degree of personal risk.
Mark’s seniority means it is his job to sign what's known as the Certificate of Release to Service – the last document certifying that the plane is ready to fly.
Yet that simple signature carries with it a huge weight of responsibility. “When I sign an aircraft off then if something happens, I'm liable for it,” he says.
It’s not the corporate staff that have delivered Qantas’s unrivalled safety record, Mark argues. "It’s the operational staff. These are the people that should be seen as more than a number.”
Webber believes Qantas is misguided not to listen to the concerns of engineers.
“[Aviation] is a labour intensive business and labour is the most important cost line in the business,” he says. “If staff are unhappy that’s going to cause issues for productivity and the brand and we’re seeing that happen. Today it’s engineers but who is next?”
But at the same time he believes Qantas will be wary of giving in to demands simply because “it will be like a snowball effect”.
The 'rubber jungle' incident
If Qantas management seeks evidence that caring for engineers is directly related to its business model and bottom line then it can be encapsulated in one word: safety.
Just this month union boss Purvinas says engineers servicing a Qantas A380 at the Los Angeles maintenance hub made an error that meant almost 500 emergency oxygen masks were accidentally dropped down above the seats, in toilets and galleys.
A mistake like this is not unheard of. In fact, it happens often enough that it has its own nickname: “We call it a 'rubber jungle',” Mark says wryly, describing what it’s like witnessing hundreds and hundreds of masks and cords fall through the cabin.
But it’s what happened next that has Purvinas, and also Mark, deeply concerned.
Given the importance of functioning oxygen masks in the event of an in-air emergency, safety protocol requires that the masks are checked by a licensed engineer and paperwork signed to confirm they have been re-stowed correctly.
Mark points out a key element of an engineer’s job is completing mountains of paperwork on every shift to generate a clear trail of responsibility: if a safety issue emerges the airline can track back to see exactly where the error occurred.
But in the LA mask incident, “that paperwork wasn't done,” Purvinas says.
“This is unrecorded maintenance,” he argues, asking if a plane is in the air with oxygen masks that may not have been stored properly.
"That plane should be grounded immediately, and those masks taken back and certified,” he believes.
Scott McConnell, Qantas engineering executive manager, confirms the incident involved QF12 flying from Los Angeles to Sydney on August 19, but he has a differing view of the details.
“The masks were correctly re-stowed in accordance with the Airbus maintenance manual, however the certifying licensed engineer did not fill out the paperwork correctly. Once the paperwork error was identified by our engineers after take-off, the task was verified as having been complete and alternate paperwork was submitted,” he says.
What is not in dispute is that CASA regulations state that failure to record information related to airworthiness in writing is "an offence of strict liability" that can lead to prosecution as a criminal offence in some cases, if deliberate intent is proven. There is no suggestion this was the case here. However engineers hired by Qantas to work in the US undergo the same rigorous training as Australia-based engineers and are bound by CASA regulations.
An internal report was raised with Qantas, Purvinas says.
He argues the mistake occurred because of the pressure on engineers to cut corners.
“This is what happens when you’re under so much pressure to cut corners that you don’t even have time to do the paperwork properly on things,” he says. “If there’s an accident down the track and some of the oxygen masks don’t drop, no one will know who put them back in there and be able to answer the question “How did this occur?”.”
Mark says the story of the LA plane has already done the rounds of his engineer colleagues in Sydney.
“The documentation always has to happen. It’s technically illegal not do document things like that. A major no-no.”
Mark believes from his experience mistakes like this come about because of lack of knowledge of the aircraft or not being familiar with the manual.
And that makes sense at the LA maintenance hub, he believes, which is famous among engineers for “a lot of churn”.
“People come and go left, right and centre,” he says. “It’s not like the investment we have here in Australia.”
Weeds, doors off their hinges and scrounging for tools
Mark says in Sydney working conditions feel increasingly defined by neglect, cuts to infrastructure and equipment that he claims make even basic elements of the job — like finding the right tools to service and repair aircraft — difficult.
The jet base at Mascot, Mark argues, is “an absolute wreck”: weeds and rust, '60s-era bathrooms, doors left off their hinges for months and ageing computer technology: “It feels like working with one hand tied behind your back most of the time”.
While $100 million is being spent building a new training hub for pilots and cabin crew, Mark believes the engineers who underpin the safety of every aircraft, are “made to feel like a liability”.
Mark says engineers are routinely forced to go hunting around the jet base for the equipment they need to complete critical maintenance on an aircraft.
When asked for specific examples he offers two scenarios.
When a plane is parked at one of the bays in the international terminal he describes how engineers need giant stands to climb up to reach the engines to refill oil. But the stands, which used to be plentiful, are now hard to find.
“A heap of stands got taken away and so to do our job properly we have to search and scrounge trying to find a proper work stand that's suitable for the job,” he says.
His second example is the specialised tools required for maintaining each of the different models of aircraft in the Qantas fleet.
“We have so much tooling for different aircraft types and they're all held in multiple locations around the jet base and the terminals,” he says.
“They just don't have adequate tooling to do all the jobs that we need to do on a day-to-day basis. We are often trying to find tooling because it's either been lent to another port, or out for calibration.”
If a set of tools is being used on another aircraft the engineer has to wait, he says.
A Qantas spokesman said the airline had recently spent $3 million on tools, vehicles and IPads for engineers in Sydney but operations remained at two-thirds of pre-COVID levels.
Sourcing parts is also more difficult now. Gone are the days when Qantas was famous in aviation circles for the quality of its maintenance and repair of aircraft parts that were stored in Sydney. If anything went wrong, engineers were able to head to the storeroom to ask for replacements which were supplied with very little delay.
These days if a plane needs a part in all likelihood it will be held in a pool of parts owned by Air France and must be shipped to Australia to be used, with the associated delay before the plane can be back in the air.
“We don’t have control over our parts anymore. You don't know what you're getting,” says Mark, noting all of these little inconveniences add contribute to the delays passengers' experience.
“Everyone does the best that they can, with the utmost professionalism. It's just that it's harder and harder to do it because we don't have the infrastructure and the help we need and Qantas is burning all the goodwill that's been built up over decades and decades and decades. It's just so disappointing and it's depressing.”
Many engineers are at breaking point
Mark says work stress is driving him, and many of his colleagues, to mental breakdown and confides that his mental health has deteriorated to a point where he has recently been diagnosed with clinical depression.
And he says he is not alone.
Minutes from a Qantas engineers Workplace Health and Safety Committee meeting, seen by the ABC, detail the need for training and support with constant references to the impact of the roster on workplace mental health.
Changes to shift schedules brought in during COVID have caused widespread stress and fatigue among engineers. Mark describes the roster as “relentless”. While changes have been made a solution is yet to be found.
"My wife would hardly see me, the kids started asking me 'Daddy why do you have to go to work every day?' and then they only wanted their mother and rejected me,” he says. “It was so demoralising. It made me feel like I’m not a good dad. My wife was stressed and couldn’t do her own job. It was heartbreaking and I started getting depressed.”
Pervanis says morale is "absolutely in the gutter" across all Qantas departments. "For example, I can use a department in Sydney [as an example], where they require 60 people on every shift. It is not unusual for 50 out of the 60 people to call in sick on any given day."
Complicating the staffing of engineering teams is the lack of apprentices coming up through the ranks.
Purvinas says when he trained as an engineer in 1986 he was one of 250 first-year apprentices. Recent recruits have numbered just 15.
It means the average age of a licensed aircraft engineer at Qantas is 55. Mark says it’s rare for him to work with anyone under 30.
“In 10 years’ time most of those people will be retired,” Purvinas says. “[This scenario] has already led us to flight delays as there are not enough engineers to fix the planes and more are retiring every day.”
But whatever the outcome of this week’s strikes at Qantas, Purvinas believes the company needs to think carefully about its treatment of engineers lest these vital experts decide to dump the job altogether.
Expansion of Qantas’s international maintenance hubs – currently set up in Singapore and Los Angeles – may be attractive and economist Webber says Qantas would consider outsourcing more of its engineering business if it offered a profit benefit. But he warns, “If they are sacrificing quality for some cost saving they will need to balance that consideration”. It's yet to be known if the error in LA this week was related to the quality of maintenance work.
Bamber believes Qantas’s valuable brand, built on the back of its Australian heritage, could be at risk if it outsources too much of its business overseas.
“Qantas is outsourcing elements of its business rather than restoring good relations which it has had in the past with important components of its workforce and the unions that represent them,” he believes. “My mantra is don’t see the people who work for you as costs. See them as assets to invest in. Instead, Qantas appears to be very ruthlessly trying to cut costs and to see components of its workforce merely as costs to be cut.”
Yet with all the uncertainty around profit results and wages, rosters, mental health and Qantas’s investment in its engineering arm, Mark says is still able to find the passion for aeroplanes that he had as a little boy.
“It still blows me away that I get to play with a machine that's worth $250 million. And I work my butt off to learn as much as possible about how this machine works and to pass it on,” he says. “Sometimes at work I do a walk around the aircraft and just marvel, you know, at these machines. And I still love the job. I absolutely love it.”
* Mark is a pseudonym
