Sydney - Australia has not seen an industrial dispute as vicious as this since dock owners took on maritime unions in 1998 to decide who really ran the waterfronts.
Employers won that fight after strike-breakers given crash courses in freight handling in Dubai were drafted in to prove that shifting containers was relatively easy work.
The stakes are equally high in the battle now joined between Qantas Airways Ltd and three separate labor unions representing pilots, engineers and ground staff.
The nation's biggest airline does not have the support of a government keen to see unions humbled, cannot easily replace the staff it has just locked out and is led by a combative Irishman who just last week received a 71-per-cent pay rise.
The two-month stand-off came to a head Saturday when Qantas grounded its entire fleet and told employees engaged in industrial action that they would not be paid from Monday.
The unions are militant because Qantas is cutting costs by moving jobs and operations to Asia, shifting fresh investment to its budget carrier subsidiary Jetstar, and insisting that costs on its loss-making international routes be brought into line with those enjoyed by rivals like Emirates and Etihad.
Qantas is on the warpath because it is determined not to cede more of its market share or continue subsidizing its international flights with profits from domestic ones.
Alan Joyce is certainly a fighter. He believes that losing this tussle will be the death of the iconic Qantas brand.
The company has been losing 2 million Australian dollars (2.2 million US dollars) a day for the last six weeks as the unions disrupt services, force aircraft into hangars and lobby the public not to fly with Qantas.
'The cost of us agreeing to union demands is the future of Qantas,' Joyce said at last week's annual general meeting. 'Demands that restrict the company with such severe conditions will endanger the survival of the company in the long term because it'll mean that Qantas can't be flexible.'
Unions look to the ruling Labor Party to side with them in a dispute which centres on pay and conditions in Australia being cut down to levels of airlines based abroad.
They fret that if Joyce has his way the precious Flying Kangaroo logo will disappear and be replaced by fresh brands operated by new companies that engage staff at lower rates and tougher conditions.
'This is a grave and serious situation and the board should move to sack Mr Joyce immediately,' pilots' union boss Richard Woodward told Australia's AAP news agency in response to Joyce's bombshell that looks set to idle 108 Qantas aircraft at 22 airports around the world.
'Mr Joyce has now locked out every pilot working for Qantas. This is nothing short of crazy behaviour,' Woodward said.
Some are cheering the feisty Irishman on. Dick Smith, a former chairman of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, said Qantas lives or dies on the success Joyce has in pushing jobs abroad, slimming down pay packets and changing work practices.
'If Qantas international doesn't get globalized wages it will go out of business,' Smith wrote in a column in the Daily Telegraph newspaper. 'If I was a Qantas worker, I would help management save every dollar and be as productive as possible - otherwise I'd know my job was doomed.'
Labor leaders counter that workers are doomed unless they take on Joyce and win.
'I think Qantas has declared war on its workforce,' Transport Workers Union boss Tony Sheldon told The Australian newspaper. 'If they don't alter from that strategy, the workforce has no option but to defend the Australian icon.'
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