Qantas begins High Court challenge against ‘illegal’ staff cull
The High Court will today begin hearing a Qantas legal bid to overturn a Federal Court ruling that its outsourcing of more than 1600 workers during the pandemic was illegal.
Photo: AAP
Qantas is appealing two rulings by the Federal Court, which found the outsourcing of baggage handlers, cleaners and ground staff was illegal.
The first hearing in the High Court will begin on Tuesday, when the carrier will make its case.
Qantas was found to have breached the Fair Work Act in outsourcing its ground operations to avoid enterprise bargaining rights, after the Transport Workers’ Union took legal action against the carrier.
The airline, which retrenched workers in 2020, lost billions of dollars due to the pandemic which decimated the aviation sector.
A Qantas spokesman said the airline’s ability to legally outsource was to save more than $100 million a year when its survival wasn’t guaranteed.
“When we made this decision we were still in the depth of the pandemic and there was very little certainty about when our recovery would begin,” he said.
The spokesman said Qantas rejected the Federal Court’s ruling that it was not convinced that preventing protected industrial action in 2021 was not relevant in the decision to outsource.
“We’ve always acknowledged that it would have been very tough on our ground handlers and the thousands of other employees who lost jobs because of the pandemic,” he said.
Qantas will argue it could not have breached the workplace rights of the employees, as they did not have the right to take protected industrial action at the time the decision to outsource was made.
In a statement, the union’s national secretary Michael Kaine said the court would determine whether Qantas’s axing of its workforce was the “largest case of illegal sackings in Australian history”.
“There are few who have not been affected by the cruel conduct of the Joyce-led Qantas management team,” the statement reads.
“Whatever the outcome, workers must be applauded for their courage.
“Their commitment to justice has sent a warning signal to employers up and down the country.”
Maurice Blackburn principal lawyer Giri Sivaraman said Qantas lost the case on the facts.
“Now it’s trying a legal argument to get the High Court to reduce protections in the Fair Work Act to make its actions lawful,” he said.
“If Qantas wins, protections for all workers across Australia will be reduced.”
A judgement is not expected to be handed down for some months after the hearings.
-with AAP
