Another Round of Qantas Baggage Handler, Ground Crew Strike on Friday

The furor created by the alleged death threats received by Qantas Chief Executive Alan Joyce may possibly be shelved aside as the air carrier faces the bigger issue of another round of baggage handler and ground crew strike on Friday.

Members of the Transport Workers Union (TWU) are scheduled to walk out of their jobs between 4 and 6 p.m. in their latest move to pressure Qantas management to improve pay and work conditions.

As in previous industrial actions, the Friday strike is expected to affect flights in major Australian airports. The TWU said the work stoppage will affect Qantas operations in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. To join the strike are freight, cabin cleaning, catering and ground crew staff.

There is no word yet from Qantas on how the air carrier plans to deal with the Friday industrial action and another one by engineers on Monday. In previous job walk outs the past few weeks, Qantas flew larger jets, advised passengers to arrive earlier, assigned management to take over the striking employees tasks and locked out the union members. However, despite these measures, it had to cancel several flights and delay some trips.

On Monday, members of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA) will strike for four hours, beginning at 3 p.m. in Sydney, 4 p.m. in Brisbane and 5 p.m. in Brisbane.

The ongoing labor dispute is suspected to be the reason behind the death threats received by Mr Joyce and some management staff.

However, union officials dismissed the threats as a public relations gimmick from Qantas own publicity group.

"If the allegations are true then they should be looking at the hard drives of the media team at Qantas to find out whether they produced this document," TWU National Secretary Tony Sheldon suggested to The Canberra Times.

Mr Sheldon said the allegations that the unions may have a hand in the death threats are serious. He opined that it could either be a conspiracy within Qantas or the handiwork of a former Qantas employee who lost his job.

ALAEA Federal Secretary Steve Purvinas agreed with Mr Sheldon that the threats were possibly fabricated for the flag carrier to get more public sympathy as passengers' travel plans are disrupted by the protracted labor dispute.

"This is not a PR stunt, there are actually people that have been intimidated, there have been cases that have gone to the police and the police are investigating it," Mr Joyce told The Canberra Times.

Due to the death threats, Mr Joyce beefed up his security at home and in the office.