All over the nation, news of Qantas’ restructuring of Qantas International (QI) has reached ears of many Australians and many have voiced out their concerns on the matter. Qantas International has been the weak link in the operations of Qantas group compared to its domestic, freight, low-cost carrier Jetstar and frequent flyer businesses. Qantas’ new strategy involves expanding its base of operations into the Asian region to capture the market share of a boom in airline activity. With this new strategy, it plans to introduce job- cuts of 1000 employees mainly pilots and engineers. According to the two articles given, the Australian and International Pilots Association (APIA) and the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA) are pressuring Qantas’ Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Alan Joyce to abolish his downsizing policy. The unions and also the general public wants to keep jobs in Australia instead of having it outsourced to other countries which according to the CEO, will significantly reduce QI’s labour costs and increase their profitability.
2.0 STRATEGIC CONTINGENCIES AFFECTING STRATEGIC CHOICES & HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING 3.1 Environmental factors affecting strategy
The fast changing environment of the aviation industry plays a major role in QI’s restructuring. A number of events have caused QI to re-evaluate its strategies in order to adapt to its environment. The main factor in this case would be due to the economic instability experienced due to the recent Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Various costs have risen over the past few years, significantly fuel and labour costs. As the price of fuel is not of QI’s control, labour costs will need to be reduced significantly to accommodate fuel costs. With the Asian economy growing extensively which results in more air travel within the region, QI has seen Asia as a region where they can expand their business into and
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