Australia’s largest airline has been accused of “malicious intent” after the High Court dominated Qantas illegally sacked virtually 1700 employees through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Federal Nationals chief David Littleproud stated it is now clear that Qantas did the incorrect factor and identified that new CEO Vanessa Hudson was chief monetary officer on the time.
“There are serious cultural deficiencies at Qantas,” he advised Nine’s Today present on Thursday.
“I think this has malicious intent – they were taking advantage of what was the biggest crisis since the Second World War in this country and … took advantage of it at these workers’ expense.
“There are severe questions that should be checked out … the board must act swiftly, or themselves step apart.”
The affected ex-Qantas employees will seek compensation and penalties, which could run into the hundreds of millions, after the High Court ruling on Wednesday.
In a unanimous judgment, the court dismissed an appeal from the carrier which had sought to overturn two rulings made by the Federal Court that the outsourcing of baggage handlers, cleaners and ground staff was unlawful.
Qantas was found in the Federal Court 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 during the pandemic, which decimated the aviation sector.
Qantas said the decision to outsource the remainder of the airline’s ground handling function was made in August 2020, when “borders had been closed, lockdowns had been in place and no COVID vaccine existed”.
“As we now have stated from the start, we deeply remorse the non-public affect the outsourcing resolution had on all these affected and we sincerely apologise for that,” the airline stated in an announcement.
“A previous resolution by the Federal Court has dominated out reinstatement of employees however it should now contemplate penalties for the breach and compensation for related staff, which is able to consider redundancy funds already made by Qantas.”
Qantas posted an underlying revenue of just about $2.5 billion for the 2022/23 monetary yr.
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
