Qantas facing a fine for sacking 2000 crew despite court ruling

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The union’s lawyer Josh Bornstein from Maurice Blackburn said he was disappointed with the decision and “very concerned about the signal that this decision sends to corporate Australia because the impact of the decision is that Qantas will ultimately stand to profit from its unlawful behaviour”.

“The court was persuaded by evidence from Qantas’s witnesses that if a reinstatement order was made that it would be likely that the workers would be sacked again. We don’t accept that was the right decision,” he said.

Mr Blackburn said the decision had effectively extinguished the collective bargaining rights of the workers. He said the decision sent a message to corporations that they could “buy their way out” of workplace laws when it came to mass terminations.

A spokesman for Qantas said it welcomes this judgment and the clarity it provided former employees.

“This decision shows the TWU has been giving their members false hope of getting their old jobs back, when reinstatement was always unworkable,” the spokesman said.

“We’ve always said that the decision to outsource our ground handling function was based on lawful commercial reasons in response to the unprecedented impact of the COVID crisis, which has so far led to more than $20 billion in lost revenue. This underscores why it was so important that we unlocked the critical savings from outsourcing the remainder of our ground handling.

“We have appealed the Court’s original decision on the outsourcing decision, which is due to be heard early next year.”

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said this week he and his executive team were closing in on a deal to overhaul its domestic aircraft fleet, preparing to order more than 100 new jets with an estimated price tag of about $5 billion in a decision that will reshape its operations for the next three decades.

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