“We are aware that cabin crew represented by E tū union have voted to take industrial action,” Air New Zealand’s chief executive officer Nikhil Ravishankar said in a statement.
“However, no formal notice of a strike has been received.”
He said negotiations were scheduled to continue with the union later this week to “progress efforts to reach a fair and sustainable agreement that recognises the important work our crew do”.
E Tū union spokesperson Michael Wood told RNZ’s Midday Report there were 1200 cabin crew who were members of the union who were employed across three different collective agreements and worked on both short and long haul flights.
“All three of those groups have voted to move forward with industrial action, that is strike action, in pursuit of a fair outcome in their collective agreement negotiations.”
Members had voted in favour of strike action of about one day and the date of the strike had not yet been notified but it would be before the end of the year, he said.
The cabin crew and flight attendants loved their jobs and wished they were not having to do this, he said.
“We will be working really hard and negotiating in the coming weeks and if we can reach a fair settlement then there’s the potential for that industrial action to be averted.”
The strike action would not be in the seven days before Christmas, he said.
“We’re also specifically setting up the strike action so that international-based cabin crew will be available to crew aircraft to return New Zealanders back home.
“So we’ve thought really hard about this, it’s a step that cabin crew didn’t have to make and they’re trying to make the action impactful because they want it to be for a better outcome, but they’re also thought really hard about how they can manage those issues for Kiwi customers.”
The union is required to give 14 days notice of the strike action under the Employment Relations Act, he said.
Unions have been negotiating with Air New Zealand since April, so a lot of time has been spent trying to get a deal, he said.
Wood said cabin crew were the airline’s frontline workers, and the job was far from glamorous.
“They’re trained first responders who literally save people’s lives sometimes on flights. They’re the people who look after your kids if you send them to visit grandma down country.
“They deal with difficult and unruly customers from time to time, and they work crazy hours in challenging conditions – they’re often away from home,” he said.
Cabin crew were not highly paid although they did receive allowances to pay for things they needed because they were away from home, he said.
“But their guaranteed base pay is often around the $60,000 mark as it stands, I think people often have this image that the life of a flight attendant is glamourous and highly paid and all this kind of thing, it’s really hard work and the guaranteed base pay is not high.”
The goal of the negotiations was to ensure there was good fair base pay and that union members were not having to trade off protections in terms and conditions in order to achieve that pay increase, he said.
