Scores of jobs axed at Melbourne Airport in wake of pandemic
Melbourne Airport is slashing almost 70 jobs after the domestic and international travel markets were devastated by the coronavirus pandemic.
Business
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Melbourne Airport is making scores of workers redundant as the collapse in air travel takes a heavy toll.
Almost 70 staff — or more than one in every six — employed by the airport have lost their jobs.
Some have left already, but most will finish at the end of the month, the Herald Sun understands.
The airport has been working through a consultation process with affected staff the past week and finalised the number of job cuts late on Thursday.
It comes after the domestic and international travel markets were upended in the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, with Victoria’s second wave of infections exacerbating the impact for Melbourne Airport.
“Sadly we have announced redundancies as a result of the ongoing impacts of COVID-19,” a spokesman said in a statement.
“In all, there are 69 roles impacted, which represents 17 per cent of our group and includes roles across the business — from corporate functions through to airport development and operations.”
The spokesman said that over the past six months, the airport operator had “prioritised a series of cost-saving measures” to try to avoid job cuts.
Among them, it had cut spending on major projects, put a freeze on recruitment and pay rises and cancelled performance-based bonuses.
The company’s shareholders have also foregone dividends, the spokesman said.
Victoria’s second wave of virus infections and the knock-on effects were among factors that had “made the need to reduce workforce costs unavoidable”, he said.
The redundancies likely represent the tip of the iceberg of roles at the airport that have been affected by the pandemic.
While the airport directly employs several hundred people, thousands more who typically work at the site are employed by other companies.
Before the pandemic hit, about 20,000 people across 300 companies worked at Melbourne Airport, but many employers have since stood down or retrenched staff.
In particular, key airline tenants Qantas Airways and Virgin Australia have embarked on extensive redundancy programs.
Melbourne Airport is effectively owned – under a long-term lease from the federal government – by Australia Pacific Airports Corporation.
That company is in turn owned by a series of big institutions, including industry superannuation funds and the federal government’s Future Fund.
Its lease on the airport runs until 2047, with an option for a further 49 years.