Nationwide Border Force airport customs & immigration strike on Nov 9

As much as people may hate this,  I support these folks and i am not a public servant.

God damn airport management should make the experience more easy.

I'd be speaking to my airline and changing flights.

My reading on things is its the 9 November - ie midnight to midnight.

I left ADL that morning no issues.

The answer is...When did the border force do domestic airport security screening?

and other employees carrying out passenger screening and customs inspections

are the annoying, arrogant security staff at sydney domestic part of the border force? that was my question

Why would the Border Force have anything to do with domestic airport security screening? You don't cross the border when flying from Sydney to Melbourne, so no, this is international only.

If you see them that often that they are 'arrogant and annoying', then you should probably know the answer.

Passenger screening = is essentially when they check passports outbounds, plus I assume some other officers who do observational profiling of passengers

Customs inspections = customs checking of luggage. Customs is something done when crossing borders.

P.S.: I'm sooo glad I'm not unionised. I'd be so embarrass to be a part of an organisation pulling these sort of stunts. While legal, I'd hate to be seen to be unprofessional.

Of course I'm skilled and mobile; able to move to different employers if I am not happy with current conditions. Quite a different matter I suppose when I am a serf of the state with no qualification and skills and have no other options in life. That's the problem isn't it? They're in bonded servitude and have no option to leave? *sarcasm*

Well, in fairness... whilst I think its stupid to get the public offside by dragging them into your workplace dispute, part of the problem is that when the Gov created the border force they dragged customs officers over and some of them lost pay. If I lost pay, but was doing the same job, I too would also be unhappy.

Also, lots of employees in the world (firefighters, ambos, nurses) aren't exactly in mobile industries and are highly unionised. I appreicate their work and don't believe I am better than them because they happen to be employed by the Gov.

Cant believe the short sightedness of so many of these comments! These people have been working harder and harder for years, as the government cuts staffing levels down to the bone. Delays in some airports are routinely reaching over 3 hours, even when they work their hardest.

Now the Government wants to strip all their workplace conditions out of their Enterprise Agreements, as well as slashing their pay - staff are looking at losing $8000 a year.

How many of you would be happy to take an $8000 a year paycut, in return for working harder, with less job sevcurity?

Making the public pay a price with long delays is wrong and stupid, seeing the old in that long queue made me real sad. 

Working harder and harder? I think it must be some time since you have visited an airport! These guys are overpaid as is.

The key here is that no one is forcing them. Leave if they are not happy with wages and conditions. The market will correct itself. Unless you're acknowledging a structural issues with skills and productivity that limits people's choice to move within the evonomy. In which case, let's fix that i.e. the root cause! Skill up the workforce so that they can transition to different jobs as the economy changes to reflect global requirements. It's perverse to think people should just stick around the one job for life.

@TRB - of course no one is forcing them. But the market does not always correct itself... workplace safety is one of those areas. Additionally, there would be many more instances of employers exploiting workers if we let the market take care of things. 

Additionally, you are making comments 'like jobs for life' etc. On what basis are we making the assumption? Nobody wins if agencies have high turn over... it costs organisations to recruit and train, without factoring in lost organisational knowledge and productivity if staff are unhappy. Some turn over is a good thing, but not the mass scale you are suggesting should occur.

Your example of upskilling is fine when talking about preparing people for technological changes... but it is not neccesarily fair for people's pay to be cut because the Gov gives you a new uniform.

As stated, I dont think striking assists their cause. But the Gov does not have clean hands. 

Wouldn't surprise me if the same muppets that are striking and causing problems, create more problems by disabling the Smart Gates

The smart gates were disabled during the prior rolling strikes in September......

I did find during the September one though that the smart gate at SYD were still in use for arrivals, except you had to walk through a long tunnel into a separate arrivals area that remained open. Let's hope this time it's the same..

Perhaps you should understand what they are striking about before commenting.

None of us flyers care what they wany want, its rather simple they are making the public pay for their demands, awful behavior. 

Sorry, I must have missed the memo where you were elected speaker for all flyers. I'm flying out of Sydney this Friday and returning next Saturday. I am lucky not to be affected by this and would be very cranky and annoyed if I was caught up in this.

But I do want to know what is going on. Just like, I want to know why nurses strike or firies etc etc. At least then, I can make up my own mind rather than just listen to union or government dribble. As I have stated, I think striking is stupid... it would benefit them significantly more not to get the public offside. But there are two sides to every dispute and the Gov could also stop this if they really wanted to.

Ah would that possible be because not all customs officers are meant to screen passengers? Are there not customs officers designed to risk assess passengers behaviour?

$8,000 is a figure that is often quoted in the media and by the unions, although as far as I've seen nobody has actually shared what the pay would be cut from and what it would be after that cut. Methinks they're likely paid very well for what they do and the subsequent offer was actually quite reasonable all things considered, but I imagine there's a fear that if they go on record in saying what the government has actually offered them, they'll look greedy. Instead, they stick with the attention-getting tagline "$8,000 pay cut" to avoid sharing the actual numbers...

You need to concentrate more when you read. The only cuts are proposed to 'allowances' some of which are a joke and offered in hardly any other industries, why taxpayers have to pay these guys to go to the gym is beyond me. Typical unions. As Dean has said and I can confirm, these guys get paid very well not even considering the standard of the job they perform.

You have a very low opinion of this country's border staff, based on nothing but your own bias. If they are doing such a poor job as you suggest, show me the evidence

As for pay, they are being offered one of the worst deals in the APS at 1% per year.. So that's an effective pay cut before you even talk allowances.

As for these guys getting paid pretty well, the starting salary is $42K. Hardly the gravy train you make them out to be on

Enjoy your eight hour working day by the way. Proudly brought to you by the union movement.

$42k may well be the starting salary for trainees, but after six months the base salary rises to ~$52k, does it not? That's also not including all of the other allowances, including being paid to exercise which is frankly ridiculous.

union movement - the most useless communist gangs ever. Free labour market is the best - do or don't! Will find somebody else :)

Not far off...

ha ha sory few spellings :)