Australia’s largest airline is staring down the barrel of another nine-figure fine for illegally sacking more than 1800 workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
The Federal Court will hand down a hefty penalty to Qantas on Monday in what will be the latest court blow for the airline after a scandal-plagued recent tenure.<\/p>\n
Qantas outsourced its baggage handlers, cleaners and ground staff in 2020, in a move the court ruled was designed to curb union bargaining power in wage negotiations.<\/p>\n
It appealed the ruling to the High Court but the decision was not overturned, paving the way for Monday’s penalty.<\/p>\n
The Transport Workers Union has sought the maximum penalty of $121 million, while Qantas has urged Justice Michael Lee to impose a “mid-range” penalty between $40 million and $80 million.<\/p>\n
Qantas will cop the fine on top of a $120 million compensation payment it has made to the ground staff for their economic loss, pain and suffering since their jobs were outsourced during the pandemic.<\/p>\n
It has argued the actions were a mistake, not a deliberate breach of the law.<\/p>\n
Qantas also sold tickets to cancelled flights for several years, triggering more legal turmoil and a $100 million fine after it was sued by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.<\/p>\n
The carrier, which was under the control of Alan Joyce at the time of the illegal sacking, lost billions of dollars during the pandemic, which decimated the aviation sector.<\/p>\n
But the former CEO did not address the scandal when he spoke at an aviation conference on Thursday, instead spruiking his ability to keep the airline afloat in unprecedented times.<\/p>\n
“But here’s the real insight: resilience isn’t a reaction \u2026 it’s a decision made years in advance, often when it’s uncomfortable, even unpopular,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Qantas was the only major Australian airline not to go bankrupt during or after the pandemic \u2026 that wasn’t luck. That was resilience.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia’s largest airline is staring down the barrel of another nine-figure fine for illegally sacking more than 1800…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,3861,59077],"class_list":["post-76972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-qantas","tag-tweed-shire-council"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}