Up to 9000 Qantas workers ready to strike

File photo / Sarah Ivey

Up to 9000 Qantas workers are ready to strike if the airline fails to guarantee job security.

Transport Workers' Union (TWU) national secretary Tony Sheldon says Qantas employees including refuellers, caterers, cleaners, baggage and transport staff are prepared to take industrial action if the airline sends more jobs overseas and puts the travelling public at risk.

"We've said to Qantas that there are 9000 members of the Transport Workers' Union, and workers right across this industry, who expect the company to negotiate," he said on Tuesday.

"And the simple answer has been they (Qantas) are not prepared to negotiate on job security, on safety for the Australian public.

"If that's an issue they won't negotiate on to improve ... then I can see the workforce only taking one step - which Qantas is aware - and that is industrial action."

Qantas workers want a four per cent pay rise with additional superannuation payments, in line with other transport companies including Linfox, Toll and Australian Air Express.

Qantas labelled the union's threat to strike as a "grab for media attention".

It said it had not begun formal discussions with the TWU over a new pay agreement and would not do so until July.

"This so called job security claim is a union tactic to remove any flexibility the company has to deal with the volatile nature of the aviation industry," a Qantas spokesman said.

"The unions are threatening industrial action while the company deals with rapidly increasing fuel prices, an underperforming international business and the operational impact of natural disasters in New Zealand, Japan and in Australia."

Mr Sheldon rubished statements Qantas could not afford a pay claim following the company's announcement of a four-fold profit increase in February.

"Given the profit announcement of earlier this year, there is a capacity for Qantas to not just strike a fair bargain with their employees, but to honour it," he said.

Mr Sheldon said Qantas was putting the airline's envied safety record at risk by outsourcing jobs overseas.

"You ask anyone who catches a flight for Qantas and they've seen the deterioration of service - the decrease in flight attendants, the planes that don't get serviced, sometimes the shoddy equipment that gets used - and it's continuing to deteriorate and that's because of outsourcing," he said.

"Qantas has stated they are going to outsource more and more Australian community jobs, drive wages down, drive training down, drive quality down and drive the aviation industry standards down."

Qantas said it would do everything it could to minimise impact on passengers should unions go ahead with strike action.

- AAP