More Qantas jobs may go as international flights stay grounded

Qantas has told pilots it views compulsory redundancies as ‘failure’, but concedes some jobs may have to go.

Qantas will try to avoid compulsory redundancy as it prepares to downsize its workforce

Qantas employees will learn in the next week how many jobs will go due to COVID-19, following drastic cuts by other airlines.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce will deliver an update on the airline’s future by the end of the month to provide more certainty for its 30,000 employees.

More than 25,000 remain stood down although up to 2000 will return to work as Qantas and Jetstar increase domestic flights in coming weeks.

With international services now scrapped until October, the future is much less clear for employees in that part of the business, particularly those who crew Boeing 747s and A380s.

Qantas is not expected to ­return its five remaining 747s to service and has put its 12 A380s into storage, where a spokesman said they would “remain for some time”.

A webinar for pilots hosted by Qantas International CEO Tino La Spina on Monday heard he viewed “compulsory redundancy” as a failure on the airline’s part. Qantas would seek to manage numbers in other ways, Mr La Spina said.

These included voluntary redundancies, early retirement and reaching an agreement with pilots to be paid less for flying fewer than minimum hours.

A Qantas spokesman confirmed it was reviewing the scope and scale of its business.

Several international carriers have already announced plans to reduce their workforces by between 5 per cent and 50 per cent, including Air New Zealand, Emirates, Ryanair, British Airways and Lufthansa.

Emirates is expected to shed 30,000 staff from its 105,000-strong workforce, British Airways is looking at a reduction of 12,000 from a total 42,000 and Lufthansa has flagged 22,000 job losses across its Europe-wide­ ­operations that employ 135,000.

Air New Zealand will shrink by 30 per cent, or 4000 jobs, and American and United Airlines have both announced plans to shed 30 per cent of their managerial and administrative staff.

Australian and International Pilots Association president Mark Sedgwick said the union was hoping there would be no forced redundancies but ultimately the airline would be in ­control of the process.

“We’ve definitely had discussions that having employees stood down for extended periods is a difficult proposition and without some kind of income support it may be preferable for some pilots to look for redundancy,” Mr Sedgwick said.

“I can’t say where the majority of pilots will sit on that.”

He said AIPA had written to the federal government seeking continuation of the JobKeeper allowance and he was hopeful Qantas would do the same.

“We think it’s important that aviation continues to get looked after,” he said. “These fears of second waves (of infection) will impact the industry domestically and, with no international travel possibly until next year, government assistance to aviation workers will be required.”

Qantas has taken several steps to reduce costs over the past few months. Mr Joyce has not been paid since March, along with other senior management executives and board members.

In addition, the airline has raised $1.5bn in bank loans against its wholly owned Boeing 787-9 aircraft.