Airline engineers plan strike over shifts

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Air New Zealand is preparing contingency plans for a threatened eight-day strike by 1200 maintenance engineers in a dispute over shift work.

But the unions are understood to be asking colleagues in Australia to restrict the airline's ability to send aircraft there for urgent maintenance.

The two unions representing engineers at Air New Zealand's lucrative maintenance bases in Auckland and Christchurch are threatening to start an overtime ban on March 30 and then, if this does not coax the airline back to negotiations, an eight-day strike from April 5.

Their actions will not affect day-to-day aircraft maintenance on airport tarmacs but would sting Air New Zealand financially in the most consistently profitable part of its operation, which is heavily dependent on work for other airlines.

Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union advocate Bill Newson said it was hard to gauge whether airline operations would be affected as well, because maintenance engineers had not been on strike for more than 20 years.

But, when asked if Air New Zealand might send aircraft to Australia for urgent maintenance, he said he was contacting unions representing Qantas workers "and people can draw their own conclusions about that".

He disclosed that the airline had offered a 3.75 per cent pay rise, but said this was not out of line for what skilled workers were gaining generally, and it would be potentially negated by lost shift allowances.

Four months of negotiations involving his union and the Aviation Technicians' Association broke down over Air New Zealand's insistence on a right to force engineers hired for permanent day duties to move to shift work, and vice versa.

He said the airline already had plenty of flexibility from 11 different shift structures but wanted an "open slather" ability to change people's working schedules at will.

"This will play havoc with people's lives."

Mr Newson said engineers accepted a 12-month wage freeze to help Air New Zealand through the collapse of its Ansett Australia subsidiary in 2001.

Airline spokeswoman Rosie Paul said it needed greater ability to meet the needs of its customers and match work flows in a competitive aircraft maintenance market.

She would not confirm details of the pay offer, but said it addressed the need for greater flexibility as well as including a general wage adjustment.

The airline was reviewing contingency plans to ensure minimum disruption from industrial action, and was continuing to try to work with the unions to break the impasse.