Dialogue: Businesses always have a duty to their workers

BARRY O'CONNOR* says the Air New Zealand board's attitude to Ansett employees is redolent of a passionless economy whose time is past.

It was interesting to note the words of the acting chairman of Air New Zealand, Dr Jim Farmer, QC, when he said: "We don't have any kind of obligations to those employees."

At a single stroke all was revealed. One needed go no further than the fatal words to see the terrible chasm that had developed between the mind of the board of directors and the mind of the business. And this in a week in which the terrible events of the twin towers in New York has rammed home to us the hopelessly vulnerable world we now live in.

The symbolism is inescapable. Air New Zealand had built for itself twin towers of strategy. It was to be a major player in the world of air commerce.

The left tower was Air New Zealand and the right tower was Ansett Australia. And now we're confronted by the smoking ruins of a collapse that has been made all the more terrible by words that cannot seemingly see beyond the smoke and dust of the ruins of a once great company's hopes and dreams.

Well, Dr Farmer is wrong. There is a world beyond the nuance of the written contract, the subtlety of the carefully placed word, where businesses do have a care and responsibility to their employees, no matter what the situation.

Because if he pauses to think on it a moment, while thousands of Australians crawl amid the dust and rubble of a disaster he seemingly has mentally walked away from, the other tower now also sways uneasily upon its badly damaged pedestal.

What sort of message has he sent to the New Zealanders now worriedly working in the left tower? That they also do not count if things go terribly wrong in Air New Zealand? That Air New Zealand will stand by them until such time as there is no longer any legal obligation?

To say the least, the impression one is left with is unfortunate.

This is the thinking of a passionless economy whose time is now past - the words of a Rogernomics mentality, the days of which are shortening in line with the mind economy now speeding past our business eyes at the pace of light. And what do we most need in this mind economy?

The many and diverse human minds who can glimpse potential among the 1s and 0s that flow rivers of information to the computer terminals on every desk.

But even more, this new economy is about the mind of the men and women working at every level of every business. In the case of Air New Zealand, the mind that must now, in like fashion to the brave New Yorkers, steel itself for the job ahead that has to be done.

And what is that job? To pick itself up from amid the rubble of the financial catastrophe visited on it and work to make a great airline great once more.

Frankly, I was embarrassed by Dr Farmer's words on television, embarrassed for New Zealand and embarrassed for the thousands of Australian workers who have lost their jobs. He is an eminent legal thinker but in this situation we are no longer classically talking about the law.

We are talking about an angry Australian nation that, rightly or wrongly, sees Air New Zealand as a parasite that could not marshal its obvious talents to make a big dream happen.

Perhaps his team won a battle in pulling off its Bank of New Zealand-like Houdini act. Experience, however, suggests the Australian trade union movement is not only powerful but is equal to the task of bringing Air New Zealand to its transtasman knees should it so choose.

The role of the chairman of the board can be a lonely one indeed, yet in times of crisis a source of strength and inspiration.

Perhaps something worthy of note as the chairman, board members, the members of Air New Zealand's management team and its many loyal staff form the rescue teams that for long months ahead will be head down and tail up in the building of a more successful future for both Air New Zealand and for this country.

* Barry O'Connor is the managing director of Northcote-based management consultancy Corporate Strategies.

* Brian Rudman is ill.