Qantas threatened in bitter strike row

Qantas boss Alan Joyce has received a death threat, managers have been sent menacing letters and strike-breaking workers bullied amid a bitter industrial dispute, the airline said Wednesday. Qantas is facing industrial revolt from all three of its staff unions -- the Transport Workers Union and those representing pilots and engineers -- after announcing plans to cut 1,000 workers as they refocus their business towards Asia. The carrier said Joyce had been the victim of threats, with one letter reportedly telling the Irish chief executive: "It's coming soon Paddy. You can't even see it." "The Unions will fight you... Qantas is our airline, started & staffed by Australians, not foreign filth like you," the Daily Telegraph reported the typed threat as reading in part. The letter said Joyce's "evil plans" would come back to haunt him and he would be kicked out of the country, the Telegraph reported. The paper also said senior Qantas staff had had their car windows smashed and houses damaged after refusing to strike. Qantas corporate affairs director Olivia Wirth, who said she had also received threats, said workers who chose not to take part in strike action had been bullied and intimidated. Joyce said Qantas management had "received menacing correspondence, including to their homes" in what he described as "abhorrent, and illegal" acts. "Those who are in the business of using threats, violence and intimidation to obtain their industrial ends should know this: these tactics are cowardly and deplorable," Joyce wrote in a memo to 35,000 staff. "They will not work. Anyone who is caught will face the full consequences." Unions have denied any involvement in the threats and questioned Qantas' decision to make them public. Transport Workers Union New South Wales secretary Wayne Forno said the letters had come as a complete surprise to him. "There's no place for violence in any industrial campaign," he told ABC Radio. "There's no room for acts of intimidation and violence."