I also listened to that RN interview with Skroo. My heart sank listening to him. He sounded washed out and totally spent. I interpreted his cautious comments relating to the JobKeeper initiative in the context of what it would mean for the stood down employees, rather than any kind of commentary about what it meant for the business itself. Fran's line of questioning was all about the employees (nothing wrong with that), which is what he was responding to, imo.
This discussion all boils down to just how many staff FLT were planning on retaining with an 'active' status (i.e. not stood down). Remember, staff who are stood down incur nil payroll cost by the company, unless they're drawing down previously accrued leave entitlements, etc. Putting aside accrued leave drawdowns for the moment, the JobKeeper payments will have neutral financial effect on FLT wrt stood-down staff. Active staff must be paid their normal remuneration according to the relevant EBAs.
For those who have a view that FLT was always going to retain the majority of its AU staff on active duty, the JobKeeper initiative is most certainly valuable to FLT to the extent of the staff that are retained on active status (because FLT will now receive a $1500/fn per staffer in govt subsidy that previously didn't exist for those staff that were always going to be maintained on active status). No argument there.
For those who have the view that the first round of AU stand-downs was not the end of it and that FLT was always going to need to stand down many, many more in due course, then the JobKeeper initiative becomes a zero-sum calculation to the extent of those planned stand-downs - albeit with some short-term benefit received until all but a skeleton staff are actually stood down (i.e. timing issues). With the company effectively in wind-down mode to hibernation this camp holds the view that FLT simply cannot afford to keep many staff on an active status. Better to have them stood down whereby the company incurs nil payroll cost whereby the Fed Gov covers some basic living costs for employees.
I'm in the latter camp, while you appear to be in the former camp and that's fine with me. While I don't believe that FLT is going to hell in a hand basket (well, hopefully not), I do believe there will need to be many, many more staff stand-downs (AU and offshore) before this thing is fully resolved - hence my view of limited material net financial benefit to FLT arising from the JobKeeper scheme. It will all depend on just how many AU staff FLT chooses to retain on active duty.
Agreed that this will help retain their preferred best staff for when normal trading can begin to resume. This is what I alluded to when I previously wrote about the non-financial continuity benefits.
(20min delay)