Auckland Airport chief operations officer Chloe Surridge said the airport was required to have qualified rescue and firefighting staff available at all times for flights to operate.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith all members of its AES team covered by the strike notice, the notified strike action would leave the airport without the people required to maintain that service.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the strike activity goes ahead as notified, flights may need to be cancelled or diverted … causing significant disruption to tens of thousands of travellers as well as the airlines, freight operations, exporters and businesses that rely on the airport.\u201d <\/p>\n
E t\u016b assistant national secretary Mat Danaher said workers wanted pay that reflected the physical and psychological demands of their roles.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen something goes wrong on that airfield, these are the people who run towards it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey protect passengers, airport workers, and the public, and they have to be fit, sharp, and ready every single shift.\u201d<\/p>\n
The team provides aviation firefighting, rescue, marine response and medical care across the airport and on the Manukau Harbour.<\/p>\n
E t\u016b said the airport\u2019s live-fire training facility had closed after \u201cyears of underinvestment\u201d, forcing firefighters to travel to Singapore for five days each year to meet Civil Aviation Authority requirements.<\/p>\n
From next year, the training would require two five-day trips annually.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirefighters are being flown to Singapore to keep their skills up, away from their partners and kids, and the airport won\u2019t properly compensate them for it. That cost is landing on firefighters and their families,\u201d Danaher said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAuckland Airport made $309 million in underlying profit last year and paid out $224.9 million in dividends. It can afford to do right by the team that keeps it open.\u201d<\/p>\n
The airport was working through contingency plans to minimise disruption, while passengers were being encouraged to check with their airlines for updates.<\/p>\n
Surridge said the emergency staff were valued members of Auckland Airport and the company remained committed to reaching \u201ca fair and reasonable agreement through constructive negotiation\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are encouraging E t\u016b to continue working with us at the bargaining table so this disruption can be avoided.\u201d <\/p>\n
Danaher said the union also wanted to avoid disruption to travellers.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody wants to strike and nobody wants travellers caught up in this. We continue to bargain with the company in good faith and we want to reach a deal \u2013 this could be resolved tomorrow if they make a reasonable offer.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Auckland Airport chief operations officer Chloe Surridge said the airport was required to have qualified rescue and firefighting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[432,2681,6224,95,51,3292,124,22048,15974,1872,70,111,43,139,69,1523,2744,1516,4485,15454,2742,109209,8812,9186],"class_list":["post-656901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-action","tag-airport","tag-airports","tag-and","tag-auckland","tag-cancellations","tag-could","tag-disruption","tag-emergency","tag-face","tag-flight","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-pay","tag-staff","tag-strike","tag-tens","tag-thousands","tag-threaten","tag-training","tag-travellers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}