Professional engineers at Qantas will impose bans on overtime and other work from next week, but the airline insists they won’t affect passengers.

Members of the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers, Australia (APESMA) in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne voted in favour of the bans on Friday, after pay negotiations stalled.

From next Friday, professional engineers will impose rolling bans on overtime and out-of-hours callouts.

APESMA director Catherine Bolger says the engineers are undervalued, and has called for pay parity with other Qantas staff.

‘They feel their role has increasingly been taken for granted, despite their critical contribution in maintaining the safe and efficient operation of the fleet,’ she said.

Qantas spokeswoman Olivia Wirth said she was ‘disappointed’ the engineers had decided to take industrial action, saying the airline had participated in the negotiations in good faith.

”They’re asking for 30 per cent pay increase over three years, which is unreasonable,’ Ms Wirth told AAP.

‘That includes a 21 per cent increase in the first year.’

But the union says the dispute is also about professional development and fatigue management.

‘Our members are required to do work out of hours, and they may be called two or three times a night,’ Ms Bolger told AAP.

‘It may well be that those members may only have four to five hours sleep before they start work the next day.’

‘Qantas needs to provide them professional development so that they’re up to date with all of the aviation technological developments.’

She said as much as one third of work done by professional engineers occurred outside of their normal working hours.

Both the airline and the union said there would be no disruption to Qantas passengers as a result of the industrial action.

Ms Bolger said the airline seemed in no hurry to resolve the dispute.

‘It’s interesting that they’ve had our claim for over five months, and they haven’t costed it until this week when we’re voting on industrial action,’ she said.

‘Qantas haven’t yet come to the table in seven months of negotiations.

‘We’ve had over 15 meetings and they’ve still not been able to respond to which parts of our claim they’d be able to agree to and which parts they think need more work.’

Ms Wirth said the airline had not walked away from the negotiating table.

‘We’ll continue to talk about it (the wage claim) during our negotiations,’ she said.

Ms Bolger said she was encouraged by a letter sent by Qantas CEO Alan Joyce saying he was committed to resolving the standoff.

Qantas employs a total of 5,500 engineers, 190 of whom are professional engineers.
Source:http://www.skynews.com.au/topstories/article.aspx