Qantas strikes delay Australian flights
Updated
Qantas will not negotiate while there is industrial action.
Australia's biggest airline, Qantas, says it's expecting substantial delays to international flights this evening local time, while stop work meetings by enginering staff continue.
Nonee Walsh reports the Qantas Chief Executive Geoff Dixon says the airline will not negotiate while there's industrial action.
"We're not going to be stood over by these people," he says.
Next week Qantas will be making the three per cent offer rejected by the engineers to the 15,000- strong Transport Workers Union.
The secretary of the TWU Tony Sheldon says it will be rejected.
"We expect more from our company. we expect decent rates and job security form a company that we made great. "
Mr Dixon says fuel prices are driving planned job losses and service cuts, and denies a TWU claim that they're an industrial ambush.
"Just about every airline in the world in the last two weeks have started to do the things that we're doing."
The engineers will hold a stopwork meeting in Brisbane Thursday night, and will meet in Melbourne Friday.
