Save jobs by renationalising Qantas

February 28, 2014
Issue 

Qantas is just the latest big company to announce it is about to destroy thousands of jobs. CEO Alan Joyce says jobs have to go to save the company’s profit line.

We've heard the same sob story from Ford, Holden, Coca-Cola, Toyota and Alcoa all over a relative short period of time. Can we really believe these corporations, with their “creative” accounting and webs of subsidiaries and business partners?

All these companies have received large amounts of public subsidies and Qantas, privatised two decades ago, was built with public funds.

If you feel like the public has been dudded, then you'd be right on the mark.

The usual trick by these companies is to squeeze as many subsidies from the public on the promise that it will save jobs. But Qantas is going one step further. It wants a government guarantee for its debt — like the four big banks got during the global financial crisis — while being free do away with even more jobs. It is not even pretending to want to save jobs.

The Tony Abbott government is still deciding what to do, but between the Coalition and the Labor opposition the options are to pay the corporate blackmail money and hope for the best or give up altogether.

Of course there is another way, but it doesn't even get a second of consideration. Renationalise Qantas, save the jobs and start operating it in the community's long-term interest.

But what is the community's long-term interest when it comes to industries like airlines and car manufacturing? From an environmental perspective, it is to start phasing them out and replacing them with more sustainable forms of transport.

It is a big challenge, but if we had a government that was willing to grasp that challenge then it would need to bring the major transport industries into public hands under community control.

Only such a move would allow the entire car industry to be re-tooled to manufacture public transport vehicles, electric cars and the infrastructure needed for a rapid shift to renewable energy production. It would allow the steady replacement of much of Australia's internal air travel to high-speed rail.

The transition to an ecologically sustainable future also has the potential to create many stable and useful jobs.

Green Left Weekly does not pretend to have all the answers but we do know that serious detailed research is being done by groups like Beyond Zero Emissions. If you agree with GLW that we need to approach the crisis in the car industry and Qantas within the framework of seriously addressing the climate change crisis, then you should help sustain our independent radical media project.

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