Crunch time for Air NZ jobs plan

Hundreds of Air New Zealand engineering staff will find out today if their jobs have been saved by a proposal to keep aircraft maintenance in New Zealand.

Air New Zealand Engineering Service staff in Auckland and Christchurch voted on the union plan last week, which gives concessions in pay and conditions in order to stop Air New Zealand taking all of its wide-body aircraft maintenance work abroad.

The votes will be counted today and 51 per cent of the vote is required to either accept or reject the proposal.

The proposal was put to the engineering staff after their unions, the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturers Union (EPMU), and the Aviation and Marine Engineers Association (AMEA), met Air New Zealand management to find a compromise.

Air New Zealand has already decided to take other engineering work overseas to save money, resulting in about 110 jobs lost in Auckland. About 500 jobs remained in doubt and dozens have already opted to take voluntary redundancy.

Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe has stated that about $48 million would need to be made in savings over five years to keep the wide-body maintenance "in-house".

EPMU national secretary Andrew Little said the union proposal, if adopted, would save at least 300 jobs.

The plan put to the workers involved a base annual salary and restructured working patterns and shifts to primarily slash back overtime.

The first 20 hours of overtime would be stored in a bank as time in lieu, and overtime above that could be paid out or given as time in lieu.

If the engineering staff voted no, the unions would not be giving up.

"If the vote is no, if the members say 'Listen, we are just not prepared to wear the type of changes people are talking about', as a union we would go back to the company and say 'Let's have another crack or let's try and find some alternative'," Mr Little said.

"But it would very much be left in the company's hands about the approach they want to take from there.

"But we think there are good reasons to try to do whatever we can to keep that work here. We think there are good things for New Zealand tied up in that. And we are still determined to do as much as we can to make it happen."

AMEA national secretary George Ryde said a lot of work had gone into the unions' proposal and it would be sad to see it rejected.

"Some of us have been at it for four or five months now. We think this is the best chance we have got," he said.