History
The first precursor to the AFAP was the Australian Institute of Air Pilots and Navigators, which began Sunday evening, 18 May 1938 at the Moonee Ponds Town Hall in Melbourne, when a group of about 40 pilots and navigators, primarily from Victoria, but also from New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia.
After World War II, it became the Australian Air Pilots’ Association (AAPA), taking on a greater role in traditional trade union matters such as contract negotiations and working conditions. In 1948, it was one of the organisations which came together to form the International Federation of Air Line Pilots' Associations, an international body representing the interests of professional pilots.
The AAPA was disbanded in 1959, when its entire membership resigned due to an arbitration system imposed by the government on all trade and industrial unions which was perceived as "incapable of understanding the profession." These members formed the AFAP, which initially operated as a pilots' federation outside the regulatory system of industrial and trade unions.
Thirty years later came the 1989 Australian pilots' dispute, one of the most expensive and dramatic industrial disputes in Australian history. The dispute was a response by the AFAP to a prolonged period of wage suppression, undertaken in support of its campaign for a large pay increase (which it quantified at 29.47%, though such claims usually form a starting position for negotiations). Beginning 18 August 1989, AFAP members imposed limitations on the hours they were prepared to work, making themselves available for flying duties only within the normal office working hours of 9am to 5pm. They argued that if they were to be treated in exactly the same way as employees in other industries, their work conditions should also be the same, the position adopted by the government of Prime Minister Bob Hawke. The dispute escalated, with Australian Defence Force personnel being used as strikebreakers and AFAP member pilots resigning en masse.
Read more about this topic: Australian Federation Of Air Pilots
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“You that would judge me do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“We may pretend that we’re basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”
—Terry Hands (b. 1941)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)