{"id":875184,"date":"2026-08-31T16:20:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T16:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/875184\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T16:20:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T16:20:15","slug":"qantas-ground-crews-vote-in-favour-of-industrial-action-over-pay-and-safety-conditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/875184\/","title":{"rendered":"Qantas ground crews vote in favour of industrial action over pay and safety conditions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some regional Qantas ground handling crews may soon walk off the job after overwhelmingly voting in favour of taking industrial action to demand better pay and conditions.<\/p>\n

The Transport Workers Union said 97 per cent of 350 workers who voted backed industrial action, including work stoppages ranging from one hour to 24 hours.<\/p>\n

No date has been set for a strike.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The union is required to give three days’ notice before taking industrial action.<\/p>\n

“These ground workers don’t want to go on strike, but after being sold a false promise that this airline would finally treat them with respect, they’ve got no other choice,” Michael Kaine, the union’s national secretary, said.<\/p>\n

Fourth Sydney Airport runway incident<\/a><\/p>\n

Airservices Australia, the government-owned organisation responsible for air traffic management, says it reported the “potential traffic conflict” between two Qantas planes to safety authorities on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The workers had seen their “pay, safety and conditions drop to rock-bottom levels”, the union said.<\/p>\n

The strike threat comes after Qantas’s long-haul pilots in early August also voted in \u200cfavour of industrial action before reaching a wage deal with the airline.<\/p>\n

Qantas said in a statement that it was committed to reaching an agreement with its staff that included annual pay rises.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The exact details of the airline’s offer were not clear.<\/p>\n

“Discussions through the Fair Work Commission have been constructive and negotiations are continuing,” it said.<\/p>\n

“Our focus is on an agreement that addresses what employees have told us matters most, including pay and more full-time opportunities.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Qantas’s ground staff are employed by the subsidiary Qantas Ground Services. (ABC News: Billy Cooper)<\/p>\n

Qantas said it had contingency plans to minimise any impact on operations in the event of a strike.<\/p>\n

Its ground staff are employed by the subsidiary Qantas Ground Services as casual and part-time employees.<\/p>\n

They work for Qantas Freight and the company’s regional Q-Link service, but do not service mainline and international services.<\/p>\n

“QGS workers are calling for job security, a fair pay rise after years of wage freezes have left them behind, and for the scattered work groups to be brought back together under a single Qantas banner, instead of being pitted against each other,” the Transport Workers Union said.<\/p>\n

Qantas and its ground staff are due back in Australia’s Fair Work Commission for talks on September 18.<\/p>\n

Qantas on Thursday reported $2.06 billion in annual underlying profit before tax, a 14 per cent fall attributed to a surge in fuel costs from the Middle East conflict.<\/p>\n

Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some regional Qantas ground handling crews may soon walk off the job after overwhelmingly voting in favour of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":875185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,20756,3861,444761,444759,444760,28210,108854],"class_list":["post-875184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-fair-work-commission","tag-qantas","tag-qantas-ground-crews","tag-qantas-pay","tag-qantas-strike","tag-strike","tag-transport-workers-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=875184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/875185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}