[Peetwo]

Fort Fumble strike 10/10/23: Outcome??

Apologies a little bit late to this one...

Via the Oz: 

Aviation safety regulator ‘unsafe’ say unions ahead of half-day strike



Australia’s aviation safety regulator has been accused of undermining safety in the industry through chronic understaffing and excessive working hours.

Pilots, engineers and other technical specialists employed by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority plan to walk off the job on Tuesday in an effort to have their concerns addressed.

They include members of Professionals Australia, the Australian Federation of Air Pilots and the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association.

Professionals Australia chief executive Jill McCabe said 95 per cent of their members supported escalating industrial action after CASA failed to satisfactorily respond to their concerns.

“Chronic understaffing has left CASA’s technical workforce overworked and under enormous pressure to cover a huge backlog of work that needs to be completed to keep Australia’s aviation industry safe,” said Ms McCabe.

“Twenty five per cent of our members reported working between six to 10 extra hours a fortnight and a further 15 per cent are working more than ten additional hours each fortnight.

“In addition, 65 per cent of our members indicated that working extra hours impacted the quality of inspections, the effectiveness of safety regulations, the workplace culture and their health and safety.”



Executive director of AFAP Simon Lutton said fatigue caused by excessive overtime due to understaffing was a major concern for members.

“While a key objective of CASA is to ensure that proper fatigue management protocols are enforced within Australia’s aviation sector, CASA’s role in providing a work environment conducive to managing the fatigue of its own pilot employees is extremely poor,” Mr Lutton said.

“Our members are routinely working excessive overtime to keep up with demand, and as a result, the quality of their work, their health and safety and the safety of the travelling public is being put at risk.”

ALAEA federal secretary Steve Purvinas said the highly technical nature of members’ work was being undermined by poor workplace conditions.

“The work that aircraft engineers undertake for CASA is often highly complex and takes significant time. This type of work cannot be rushed, and the consequences of cutting corners can be catastrophic,” Mr Purvinas said.

“CASA aircraft engineers need the staff and time to do their jobs properly.”

The three unions were pushing for an additional 36 technical staff in the immediate term and a review of technical staffing levels.

PA also advised they were writing to Transport Minister Catherine King about the impact of understaffing on CASA’s ability to effectively regulate safety in the aviation industry and the urgent need to lift any public sector staffing caps that apply to CASA.

“The reality is that CASA needs additional staff to keep Australia’s aviation sector safe,” Ms McCabe said.

A CASA spokesman said aviation safety would not be compromised by Tuesday’s stop work.

He said CASA continued to negotiate with unions representing the regulator’s staff, with the aim of reaching an outcome that was fair and equitable for all.

“We have sufficient qualified staff available to continue to ensure the ongoing safety of aviation in Australia,” the spokesman said.

Plus via the Mandarin: 

Federal aircraft inspectors move to strike over safety concerns, staff shortages aircraft inspection-maintenance-servicing


Sometimes you have to accept physics beats spreadsheets. (InputUX/Adobe)

Qantas might be handing out sick bags to investors after flying into a cloud of turbulence caused by dudded customers, but planes across the nation could soon have trouble taking off if the Albanese government can’t come to an agreement over sufficient staffing and training levels for the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), which keeps aircraft legally flying.

The powerful, yet usually reserved, federal aviation engineering union has called time on entrenched short-staffing and corner-cutting, filing for protected industrial action (PIA) at the Fair Work Commission. The union claims CASA has failed to respond to frontline warnings about staffing levels and training that it says are eroding aviation checking activities and safety.

Technical staff at CASA, who are represented at an industrial level by Professionals Australia, include aviation safety regulators, flight training examiners, flying operations inspectors and a range of other specialists who have to make the call on whether planes and choppers are fit to fly and equipment airworthy.

The heavily certified staff are a core element of the constant inspection activities that ensure aircraft operators don’t cut corners and comply with both Australian and international regulations. And don’t crash.

But, with an industry battered by COVID and any number of restructures and pressures to rein in costs being heaped onto the sector, aviation inspectors have called time on the dilution of their duties.

And to safely land their point, Professionals Australia has thrown in a pretty bleak recent Australian National Audit Office report that the union says found a “31% decline in CASA’s surveillance activities between 2017/18 and 2020/21.”

“The report also highlighted a mismatch between staffing levels in CASA and anticipated levels of surveillance,” Professionals Australia said.

There is an evidence base to the argument. Aviation contesters to Newtonian physics don’t live long enough to publish much.

The application by aviation safety inspectors to strike is about as serious as it gets in terms of the current stoush between the Australian Public Service Commission and non-clerical unions over standards, conditions and pay as the Australian Public Service continues to leach staff to the private sector.

By far the biggest sore spot is that private sector employers keen to poach staff from regulatory positions can implicitly trade on major wage disparities.

But equally, there’s also strong and growing concern that the public sector is trading away its once robust and industry-setting technical prowess through a blancmange of generalist instruments and classifications that devalue technical skills that may be cyclical, but broadly evergreen.

Like at Defence, where Professionals Australia is gunning for a distinct STEM classification (science, technology, engineering and maths) to rein-in the systemic leaching of talent to the private sector the moment it secures a decent clearance.

“Technical staff are vital to the safe operation of Australia’s aviation sector,” Professionals Australia ACT Director Kathleen Studdert said.

“Unfortunately, understaffing, patchy access to technical training and a classification structure incapable of effectively competing with the private sector means CASA doesn’t have the technical specialists it needs to carry out the necessary surveillance of aviation operators to keep air travel safe.

“That’s why we have called for a separate industrial agreement for CASA’s technical workforce.”

That’s also a bit of a problem — or opportunity — for smaller unions to make themselves felt.

The bottom line is that while CASA technical staff may hold smaller numbers in aviation than baggage handlers, cabin crew or administrative staff it’s still their engineers and mechanics that make the big calls.

They also have the grizzly duty of figuring out what went wrong, when it does go wrong, including finding and picking up the pieces.

Studdert said that Professionals Australia has also written to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) that the union said will conduct an audit of CASA in mid-September.

“CASA technical staff care deeply about aviation safety and our international reputation. They want to ensure CASA has the technical capabilities to ensure a culture of proactive safety,” Studdert said.

“Given our members are on the frontline of maintaining the safety of Australia’s air operations, we want to engage with ICAO to discuss our concerns about the aviation safety regime overseen by CASA.”

Bargaining continues.

MTF...P2