Last pitch to save jobs at Air NZ

Air New Zealand engineers today make a last-ditch attempt to keep their jobs, but even the help of corporate advisers Ferrier Hodgson may not be enough to win the day.

Redundancy faces 617 workers after the airline decided to contract heavy maintenance on its long-haul aircraft to overseas engineering companies in a bid to save $100 million over five years.

Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union national secretary Andrew Little said Michael Stiassny and Brendon Gibson, of Ferrier Hodgson, had analysed the situation and "come up with a viable alternative" that would be presented to the airline.

Stiassny, chairman of Vector and Auckland city's water company Metrowater, has a reputation as a top "corporate undertaker" - earned through numerous high profile company receiverships.

Airline chief executive Rob Fyfe yesterday sent a letter to Little saying that for any proposal to be viable, it would have to include "significant labour reforms" in the Auckland and Christchurch operations.

He added that " ... we still need to address other significant issues such as the lack of scale and volume of third-party, wide-body heavy maintenance and aero-engine work".

One airline analyst said while the engineers were still in with a chance to save their jobs, the lack of third-party contract work would make success difficult.

Engineering managers have been travelling the world looking for other airlines to bring their planes to New Zealand for maintenance, but say the emergence of huge new facilities in Asia has made it difficult.

Any third-party work would have to fit in around the regular needs of Air NZ and managers say the problem of this "inherent inefficiency" is difficult to solve.

Little said the engineering expertise at Air NZ was world-class and that workers were prepared to be flexible about pay and conditions.

The airline has already said a rejig of pay and conditions that could cut labour costs by 25 per cent would not make the engineering operations more viable than outsourcing.

It has said it would consider saving some of the threatened jobs in return for across-the-board concessions from the rest of the operation's 2100 workers.

Air NZ engineering services general manager Chris Nassenstein said the airline believed that even with changes to shift patterns, removal of penal rates and the introduction of an "hours bank" at its Auckland heavy maintenance facility, outsourcing was still more economic than continuing the operation.

A legal challenge to the way Air NZ has gone about consulting the unions has been lodged with the Employment Relations Authority.

They claim the airline has not given them enough time to come up with alternatives to the lay-offs.

This has been set down for a hearing next week.