The AMWU has called on CASA to release the full report of a review into Qantas maintenance operations.
 
CASA today announced two more audits of maintenance operations following findings that QANTAS is not meeting its own quality standards.
 
AMWU National Secretary Dave Oliver said that the union had extreme concerns regarding the impact of cost cutting, outsourcing and off-shoring on maintenance work.
 
“Despite announcing QANTAS is not meeting maintenance benchmarks, CASA has provided no detail on its findings or reasons,” said Mr. Oliver
 
“The best way to keep QANTAS safe is to keep work onshore and in-house with a highly skilled maintenance team.
 
“The effects of outsourcing and overseas maintenance on safety cannot be overlooked. We are concerned that the CASA review has not examined this thoroughly.
 
“QANTAS decided to remove their 747 maintenance work from Malaysia recently and yet CASA has not investigated what sort of effect offshore maintenance work has on quality control and safety.
 
“QANTAS recently recorded a record annual profit, but our members telling us they are concerned that cost-cutting measures are putting pressure on safety standards.”
 
“QANTAS management need to guarantee local maintenance jobs rather than risking the safety reputation of the airline by cost-cutting to increase profits.
 
“Despite writing to QANTAS over six weeks ago regarding the impact of recent job cuts on maintenance work we are yet to receive any assurances that no maintenance jobs will be lost,” said Mr. Oliver.