Federal Government must pay Rex workers staff entitlements
USU Media Release
The Albanese government must step in and cover the staff entitlements of Rex workers who have been told not only they will lose their jobs but that they will miss out on their legal entitlements, says the union which covers front line customer service staff, the United Services Union (USU).
Rex workers have been told they will miss out on legal entitlements by administrators despite the airline continuing to trade.
It’s outrageous workers at the airline will miss out on even one dollar of their entitlements, said USU General Secretary Graeme Kelly OAM.
“As late as the weekend workers were working overtime and on RDO’s when Rex bosses must have known they fully intended to sack them, and would try and get out of paying, it’s absolutely outrageous,” said Mr Kelly.
“Rex management could have been in contact with us months ago and brought us into discussions, but instead they chose to wait until the airline goes belly up and there is nothing we could do to help.
“And on top of that they’ve left no money to pay their workers, the union is ropable about this.
“The Albanese Government needs to step in and make sure these workers are looked after.
“The union will now be working with the administrator to try to ensure our members’ entitlements are protected and to save as many jobs as possible,” said Mr Kelly.
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13 comments
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Attuross -
Terence Mills -
New England Cocky -
Attuross -
New England Cocky -
Attuross -
Williambtm -
Terence Mills -
GL -
Andrew Smith -
Clakka -
Pete Petrass -
Terence Mills
Return to home pageI bet National Party luminary John Sharp and the rest of the Board who sent REX broke with their delusions of grandeur using the shareholders’ money to try to break into the city to city market, don’t lose a personal cent, over this.
It is always the poor, honest worker left holding the bag.
Your on the money Attuross
The REX regional network and its business plan were working well and profitably and had done so for some time but the venture into the big time major city routes generated significant additional costs without delivering the corresponding increase in bums on seats.
Management have a lot of questions to answer and cannot rely on the taxpayer to bail them out.
Just go back to the original, regional business model.
@ Attuross & Terence Mills: Agreed. Another example of the failure of the so-called ”management class” to grasp the intricacies of the real world market ….. the government preferred dominant status of QANTAS in both international and interstate air routes.
Here in Armidale NSW, half-way between Sydney and Brisbane, the cost of flying QANTAS LINK on the ARM-SYD route is often as much as $300.00 one way while a SYD-MEL flight costs a fraction of that amount.
ARM-SYD is one of the most profitable internal state routes with each flight boasting about 80% passengers when REX has been run-off the route by whatever means or reason. This price gouging does nothing to increase the economic growth in New England because it scares a potential tourists away to the coast where Virgin provide a less expensive fare.
What is required in New England is the renovation and reopening of the railway north from Armidale to the Queensland border at Wallangarra/Jennings so that the ageing pensioner population can access the distant (up to 216 km) health & medical facilities that the NSW Macquarie Street Parliament refuses to provide locally.
@New England Cocky, Another debacle for New England people, losing REX, while Joyce daily drinks himself into a stupor.
Yet they will turn out in droves to vote him in again and again.
@ Attuross: Agreed. But Beetrooter is beloved by the ladies of Tamworth who have the ability to render him obsolete by uniting and:
AT EVERY ELECTION VOTE FOR ANYONE BUT NOTIONAL$ & GET A BETTER POLITICIAN.
Still, the Tamworth ladies must feel comfortable being represented by a confessed adulterer, practising alcoholic, bigoted, corrupt, sexual harassing misogynist possibly because that is the local model for males, especially males whop vote for the NOtional$. Remember, a NOtional$ woman’s place is in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant, making dinner for her hubby out carousing at the local pub until all hours.
New England Cocky, and his being a professional Catholic for political reasons, the big family man, until he had his bit of forbidden fruit, all that went out the window, and now he is Family Man, Mark 2.
By the look of him and her, I bet the house is in a putrid state of filth.
Typically, the former Qantas CEO and possibly its new chairman had engaged in a new strategy to abuse its obligation to its Jetstar employees, by their denying the redundancy package due to those employees of Jetstar.
Given the close relationship between our Federal government and Qantas, this same would have co-existed, with its Jetstar subsidiary, from thereon forward within the prior 20-year ownership with Qantas.
Shortly after Qantas had purchased Impulse Airlines in November 2003, in 2004 Qantas had changed the former brand name of Impulse Airlines to Jetstar, hence the introduction of the name Jetstar as a wholly owned subsidiary of Qantas.
In my following up on the Jetstar demise, I introduce the major shareholders of Qantas. (The parent body.)
Well, who owns most of Qantas?
According to the latest TipRanks data, approximately 86.42% of Qantas Airways Limited (QUBSF) stock is held by retail investors. Who owns the most shares of Qantas Airways Limited (QUBSF)?
AQR Funds owns the most shares of Qantas Airways Limited (QUBSF).
See the link below, which illustrates some sort of sale of Jetstar to any number of unassociated shareholders, while Qantas retained a shareholding of 49%.
https://aviationstrategy.aero/terms_and_conditions#privacy_policy
The above linked Aviation Strategy entity had been set into place to become the extant agency to respond to all questions concerning Jetstar’s status and its business activities, interestingly, one must look into the privacy-policy of this quasi Jetstar (located in London) representing entity.
One notes that an unhealthy odour had begun to creep out from Qantas itself, considering the tactical manner of how Qantas had primarily developed its own funding of its operations which had been boosted by covert sales of their owned Qantas shares, keeping in mind that it included its subsidiary owned Jetstar.
The persons reading this comment well know how Qantas had been cadging Federal funding that overall must have been drawn from our taxpayer’s revenues, not meant or ever intended to fund privately owned business entities.
Thus, the then Lib/Nat coalition party led Federal government had incorporated Qantas into the grant
recipients of its COVID affected business entities, despite Qantas having divested a major portion of their shareholdings to the privately owned sector (while retaining a small percentage of its own shareholdings.)
There is a large amount of Qantas data available if one is enabled with how to access that data.
In summary, the greater series of the decisions and strategies elected by the former CEO Allan Joyce,
did not meet the corporations act 2001.
Media release some eleven months ago:
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/qantas-won-t-have-to-pay-back-government-2-7b-chalmers-20230825-p5dzdw.html
The Nats are keen to see the federal government shovel in taxpayer money to support REX but, the last time I looked this company, whilst listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, is 65% owned by wealthy Singapore interests.
Lim Kim Hai, a Singaporean businessman, the largest shareholder of Regional Express had been pushing to turf the entire REX board just one month after he was forced to step down as the company’s executive chairman.
During Virgin Australia’s time in voluntary administration, PAG a major Asian investment group agreed to provide Rex with a $150 million convertible note to fund its opportunistic expansion into the ‘golden triangle’, flying jets acquired from the old Virgin business between Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. This venture, as we now know, did not take off as planned and Virgin kept flying.
It seems that much of the corporate turmoil within REX in recent months has been the prospect of PAG converting its investment into equity and potentially acquiring the business.
This is a tricky one for the federal government as, whilst the Nats would like to see taxpayer money going into supporting REX, the Liberals would normally be totally opposed to using taxpayer funding to rescue an overseas owned company.
Watch this space !
And if Albanese steps in to help the workers the LNP, Murdoch, Nine/SMH, Stokes and other right wing meedja would start screaming and foaming at the mouth in confected rage about looking after union mates, etc., etc. Will Labor go after the major shareholders of Rex? Probably not, they’ll make noises and that’s about it.
Agree with Williambtm, not sure why the ALP government has to be responsible, especially when QANTAS and shareholders, like the road lobby, and its friends in high places, allow anti-competition tactics; ditto on rail.
The chooks are coming home to roost. One hundred years of political stupidity, and kowtowing to the imperialist regime of elite privilege. Oz made as a bloody great mining and agricultural network of oligopolies selling everything it can get its mits on to the global imperia. Other than for the elite privileged oligarchs, the vast land occupied by subjugated First Nations folk, and a tinpot populace of importees necessary to facilitate the filling of the vaults of the oligarchs.
Transport has never been a problem for the oligarchs. They swan about via their own aircraft, and build roads, railways and ports as and when they need to shift their plunder. As for the First Nations folk and the tinpot populace, its always been the barest of minimums to facilitate ‘national flag waving’ and inter-capital business / govt essentials, and coastal fringe tourism.
Every govt has utterly failed to progressively modernize to create effective and efficient transport. Every single knob entering the market has failed to adapt to the tyranny of distance, the vast unpopulated interior and the tinpot populace, particularly in the face of the govt’s favored protectionism models that amount to incentivizing operational and maintenance minimalism and consumer gouging – as exemplified by the disgraceful Alan Joyce.
Had the Hume Hwy and the Snowy Mountains Scheme not been funded and technically advised by the USA, we’d no doubt still be traversing by bidirectional tarred tracks and drinking and irrigating from wells per models from antediluvian British boffs.
It seems the Oz laggard-style govts only ever get out of their club lounges on the basis of crisis. So now, on top of the self-induced energy crisis, and the health crisis, and defense crisis, we have the long time coming, transport crisis. Seeing we’ve embedded the home-grown oligarchs into no or minimal tax, and privatized everything to the detriment of the tinpot populous, we’ve got the horrendous task of land transport renewal (and electrification) and fixing the airways.
No surprise really, especially now that all of a sudden everything’s got to be efficient and non-polluting! Being there’s no manumission for the tinpot populous, just how are we going to do it? Lets hope we retain a govt with functional imagination and regulation / implementation drive.
And (as per usual) you can bet your left nut there is enough money left to pay the executives all they are entitled to, including their massive bonuses.
Movie :No Country for Old Men
Wendell: [Viewing the desert crime scene] “It’s a mess, ain’t it, Sheriff ?”
Sheriff Tom Bell: “If it ain’t, it’ll do till the mess gets here”.
This link gives you a clearer picture of the financial situation but the important point made by EY (Ernst & Young as was) the Administrators is that “Rex’s regional routes, served by Saab 340 propeller aircraft, were currently unaffected by the administration and would continue to operate.”
There should be no need for Australian taxpayers to fork out money to bail out this largely foreign owned company.
https://www.privateequitymedia.com.au/news/category1/airline-administration-draws-pe-firm-into-the-spot/