By Darryl Watkins

Historically, our membership in new carriers such as Virgin Blue and Jetstar was low, due to a number of factors including the 2001 worldwide aviation downturn. Our union had to drastically change its structure and strategic direction to bring these flight attendants into the fold.

Our first priority in 2001 was to survive. We had lost half our membership (half our income), half our staff and all our property overnight. We needed to recruit in the low cost carriers not only for industrial strength in the forthcoming negotiations but also for financial security.

We needed a well planned and thought out strategy. First of all our union structure had to change from a geographic based organisation to an enterprise airline team-based structure, to give the low cost carrier delegates a voice in their union. Each major airline that we represent had to have its own FAAA airline team. This basically means that flight attendant delegates in their own airline represent their own membership on day to day issues and ultimately contract negotiations with their own airline management. At the same time, the union executive had to adequately reflect all the major airlines we represent so that no one airline with the most members could force policy or industrial strategy on to the others.

Virgin Blue is where we had great success not only in recruitment but also in educating membership on the benefits of joining the union. We did this by setting up an FAAA Virgin Blue team and allocating an FAAA staff person. First of all we did intensive internal training. The Virgin Blue team then decided to launch themselves as the new face of Virgin Blue and the FAAA by a series of clever colour posters that built up suspense and anticipation in the workplace. These culminated with a poster of all the team delegates faces in a plane, being piloted by their FAAA airline team coordinator. These posters quickly were distributed around the network.

New membership

The Virgin Blue team knew they had to find new initiatives that could bring “Generation Y” into the union. These are young, confident, lifestyle and cause-driven, technically smart graduates who make up the majority of the Virgin Blue workforce, but who the union had not had much success in recruiting.

Once the team got down to mapping the workplace, a series of new ideas quickly emerged and were acted upon. A new weekly members’ email was introduced, coffee shop visits paid and informal meetings held at crew transport pick-up spots. Informal advocates were recruited to help spread the word, while pocket sized laminates were produced summarising basic conditions of employment for workers’ reference. These are just some of the initiatives that improved the image of the FAAA Domestic/Regional Division and educated the new members on the benefits of trade unionism.

As a result, we increased our Virgin Blue membership by 50 per cent from 2004 to 2005. Our membership density in Virgin Blue now stands at 80 per cent. Our aim is to get this density as close as possible to 100 per cent, and thereby improve the collective strength of our Virgin Blue members with their forthcoming contract negotiations. Of course such strength will also help counteract the possible scenarios used by airline management under the new Industrial Relations Laws in Australia.

Here are just a few of the valuable lessons we have learned from this organising drive:

Spend time on mapping the workplace for possible recruitment/education spots.
• Do not use all disputes with management as avenues for successful recruitment.
• Plastic laminated information can be a very successful recruitment tool.
• Potential members may want to join but not know how.
• Airline members from their own airline need to recruit each other.
• Delegates need to be visible, contactable, informed and innovative.

Apathy among the potential membership must be attacked head on, first of all by having respected and committed delegates in the workplace, continually spreading the union message, supported and strategically led by a union staff person. Workers are then more likely to understand and want ownership of their current working conditions, and to feel that the union is there for them in good times and most of all in times of adversity.

Darryl Watkins is divisional secretary of the FAAA Domestic/Regional Division.