Melbourne airport in chaos, as Qantas plays down expected job cuts

Australia & N.Zealand

Australian air carrier Qantas<.> faced a troubling strike on November 19-20 as maintenance workers at Melbourne`s Tullamarine Airport began protesting thus disrupting the airline`s schedule and delay flights.

More precisely, and in accordance with foreign news reports, some 350 workers (who joined more than 2,500 maintenance workers in Sydney and Brisbane) staged two 24hour work stoppages and picketed the airport protesting Qantas` plans to introduce a wage freeze, as well as threatened more industrial action if negotiations break down. The workers announced the strike last week when the Australian air carrier said that it was planning to slash up to 2,000 jobs by Christmas season. The Australian Workers` Union (AWU<.>) and the Australian Manufacturing Workers` Union (AMWU<.>) have already rejected the airline`s wage freeze proposal, and on its part Qantas has played down the impact of the maintenance strike, saying already one union, the domestic flight attendants, had voted in favor of the wage freeze.

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