Chief’s fat pay packet riles Qantas unions

The angry reaction to the news that Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce has received a 71 percent increase in his total pay to $5 million was predictable given the airline’s plan to dump 1000 jobs.

The CEO’s pay boost comes amid an increasingly bitter industrial dispute between management and key unions representing pilots and aircraft engineers over pay and conditions.

Qantas’s annual report reveals Joyce earned a total of $5 million for the year to June 30, compared with $2.9 million a year earlier. The package includes $2.04 million in fixed pay and $2.2 million in short-term benefits

Pilots union president Barry Jackson said, “There’s 180-200 pilots who face losing their jobs, or going to Jetstar for less pay, so this pay rise to the chief executive is absolutely abhorrent, not a good look at all.”

Last month Qantas announced a $552 million profit, but that international services had lost more than $200 million.

Earlier his week, Ansett employees received their final payout, a decade after the airline collapsed.

The $5.3 million payment to the more than 15,000 former employees of the Ansett Group marks the end of the long process of the airline’s administration.

Ansett was Australia’s second largest airline when it was placed into voluntary administration the day after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US in 2001.