Air NZ workers get ready to battle '$15,000 pay cut'

Unions for more than 1700 Air New Zealand staff are to fight a proposal to outsource the work they do to a Spanish company.

Reports at the weekend that Swissport International had put in a formal offer to provide frontline services for $20 million a year less than current costs had union economists scratching their heads over how they could offer such a cheap price. Leaked documents revealed that Swissport could work in a joint venture with Australia-based Transfield Services to provide services including baggage handling and check-in work.

The documents set a timetable to hand over operations to Swissport and the airline proposed "that all airport services at Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch are outsourced to a specialist ground-handling provider, Swissport".

Service and Food Workers Union (SFWU) spokeswoman Jill Ovens said that, if the proposal was accepted, it would mean full-time workers would each have to take an average pay cut of about $15,000 a year.

Ms Ovens said stopwork meetings would be held this week and next in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch to discuss what their response would be to the proposal; however, workers would not take strike action in protest against the cost-cutting move.

About 1750 workers from the SFWU and the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union would be attending the meetings.

Ms Ovens said they would be challenging the assumptions of Air New Zealand that the contractor could do the job $20 million cheaper. "We're saying that's not possible and we want to have a look at the data.

"We're going to fight this. We're not expecting that you can do it that much cheaper, or even that you should."

Ms Ovens said it would be disastrous for the image of the national airline if they contracted out the frontline staff. She said the union's economist was going through Swissport's proposal "in great detail" so they could challenge the assumptions that were in it.

"We're also going to be putting pressure on the Air New Zealand board, which has got its AGM next week, to basically get rid of this management - they've run amok."

Air New Zealand spokesman David Jamieson yesterday refused to comment on the Swissport proposal.

- NZPA