Qantas grounds 5 planes amid union woes

Australia's Qantas Airways said it was grounding five planes because of union worker slowdowns and a spot strike, leading to the cancellation of 400 flights.The Sydney Morning Herald reported Qantas would ground four Boeing 737s and one Boeing 767 for a month beginning Sunday.The airline had begun contacting customers on canceled flights to make other travel arrangements, and a spokesman said most passengers would be put on alternative flights at no additional cost.'The coordinated attacks on Qantas and our passengers from the pilots' union, the licensed engineers' union and the Transport Workers Union are continuing to impact the business and our passengers,'' Qantas spokeswoman Olivia Wirth said.The Herald said the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association has banned overtime and begun a "go-slow" policy on day-to-day work last month. Aircraft engineers stopped work for 4 hours at Sydney Airport Friday but canceled further strike action until after Qantas' annual general meeting Oct. 28.Qantas blamed the cancellations on a maintenance backlog.But the engineers' union general manager, Peter Somerville, said the five planes were grounded because of a lack of spare parts, and Qantas was using that to ''play up industrial action.''''They should be settling the dispute and not trying to pull the wool over people's eyes,'' he said. ''If they spent less time grounding aircraft and concentrated on negotiation, we may not be talking about industrial action.''