High Court finds Qantas acted illegally when sacking 1,700 ground crew during pandemic
High Court finds Qantas acted illegally when sacking 1,700 ground crew during pandemic
Qantas took a long-running battle with the Transport Workers' Union over sacked staff to the High Court, where the airline today lost its appeal.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The High Court has found Qantas acted illegally when it sacked 1,700 ground crew workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The jobs of baggage handlers and cleaners at 10 airports were outsourced, as the airline faced a dramatic decline in business.
Qantas maintained it made the decision for sound commercial reasons after its business plummeted by more than 90 per cent.
But the Transport Workers' Union (TWU) told the High Court the airline had also been motivated to head off industrial action when things returned to normal.
The union said the cull was in breach of the Fair Work Act which prohibited actions that interfere with a worker's rights.
In a statement, Qantas said it accepted the High Court's decision and apologised for the "personal impact" the sackings had on its former workers.
The original article contains 250 words, the summary contains 130 words. Saved 48%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
And that smug little prick, Alan Joyce, managed to pull the golden ripcord just in time.
I don't know what they were meant to do with all these workers through the pandemic. They literally had no work for them and no money coming in to pay them. Given that lots of businesses laid off workers in that period, why was it illegal when Qantas did it?
I'm missing something. The article didn't really explain how this action infringed on fair worker's rights.
Qantas were still collecting Job keeper payments after they let go staff. Qantas also used the lockdown as an opportunity to outsource the work to Swissport during that period.
According to the news this morning (before the decision was handed down), the issue was that they used business conditions as an excuse when the real reason they wanted to fire workers was because of threat of them organising and engaging in industrial action.