Rockme, you can't deny that Emirates are a major competitor, as...

Rockme, you can't deny that Emirates are a major competitor, as are other middle eastern countries.

If you want to look at Asian countries, try 26% personal income tax in Malaysia, 20% in Singapore and 17% in Hong Kong. Coporations taxes is those countries is 25%, 17% and 16.5% respectively. So blaming it all on unions is a bit rich(no pun intended).

So if you earn 200k headline rate in Oz, you pay 63k in tax. Just remember, this is tax that will be lost to Oz if Qantas move offshore, and the result is 137k out of the economy to support other Australian jobs. Now if you earn 137k takehome pay in Malaysia then you will be paid a headline rate of 183k.

So Qantas employee get paid out of Qantas coffers 200k and Malaysian airlines employee gets paid 183k but both have the same takehome pay.

This shows that the Australian government is inefficient... that include Labor and Liberals.

With regards to saying, the world is your oyster, be careful what you wish for. I believe that Qantas and Jetstar are alreaady losing pilots overseas to the bigger paying jobs. Qantas pays on par with the rest of the world, you seem to think they overpay. You also seem to think that this is about money.

Take a look at what the CEO of Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines, Malaysian airlines get paid. About 30% of what Qantas is paying Alan Joyce. In fact Qantas is paying several salaries to 'high' executives, that exceed what the CEO gets paid in these Asian airlines.

This is where I side with the employees. It might seem foreign to you or any anti-union person on this forum. The employees are being paid comparable wages to the rest of the other International airlines. In some cases lower, in some cases higher. The main difference is the management, board and Ceo are getting paid well above their competitors. And what for? A declining shareprice? A loss making International arm? To me it smells of mismanagement and that is why I believe there needs to be a change at the top of Qantas.