Travellers warned of airport disruptions as ground workers walk off the job

Travellers should be prepared for delays, with more than a thousand ground staff walking off the job at airports.

Transcript

00:00Workers were calling for better pay and working conditions as part of this protected industrial

00:07action this morning.

00:08They say they're also fighting for improvements to ground aviation operations, which has been

00:14in the decline for the better part of the last decade, largely due to cost cutting.

00:19Now, a lot of these staff that walked off the job today were part of the Denata Group,

00:23which is a key part of the supply chain for several international and domestic airline

00:28carriers across the country, including Qantas, which contracts out to Denata for Sydney International

00:34Airport's catering services.

00:36It's something that the Transport Workers Union has said have been locked in ongoing

00:41negotiations for the better part of the last year.

00:44Now, today they were calling for improvements and guaranteed 24-hour working weeks for staff,

00:50as well as a guaranteed 6% wage increase for two years, which should be backdated to June

00:561st as of last year.

00:59Of course, 1,000 staff from Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide airports walked off

01:04the job for a four-hour period this morning.

01:07And we've heard from the National Secretary of the Union, Michael Caine, who says that

01:12workers were really struggling with poor rostering, low working guaranteed hours, as well as the

01:17threat of having contracts pulled due to outsourcing.

01:21We've got 1,000 workers in the Denata operation.

01:24They're the ground workers.

01:25They're the workers that make sure that the belly of the plane's properly packed, weighed

01:29correctly so the pilot can sign off.

01:32It's really important safety function.

01:33They're the ones that make sure our bags get to their destinations correctly.

01:37And we saw during COVID, when we get that recipe wrong, the airports descend into chaos.

01:43These workers, of course, have had a rough ride.

01:46This was the same group of workers who were denied JobKeeper payments during COVID because

01:50they're companies owned by a foreign government.

01:54And they're the same workers, many of them, who were illegally sacked by Alan Joyce.

01:59Travellers, both domestic and internationally, were advised to make sure they were keeping

02:04across their airlines and regularly checking in to see if there were any delays.

02:08As a result of this protected industrial action, thankfully there weren't too many.

02:13But Qantas also issued a statement saying that they did have contingency plans in place

02:18to ensure that operations did run as smoothly as possible throughout the morning.

02:24For more UN videos visit www.un.org