Qantas swings axe on 2000 more jobs

Qantas has confirmed another 2000 jobs will go from the airline, amid a major overhaul of ground handling operations.

Qantas will no longer employ baggage handlers and other ground crew after confirming the outsourcing of 2000 jobs to contractors at ten major airports. Picture: Supplied

Qantas will no longer employ its own groundhandling crews after confirming it will outsource 2000 jobs to other companies to save more than $100m a year.

The move will take the number of jobs lost across the Qantas Group as a result of the Covid crisis to about 8500, reducing the total workforce to just over 20,000.

The airline first flagged the outsourcing proposal for baggage handlers, cleaners, bus drivers and other ground crew, after announcing a $2.7bn pre-tax loss for the 2020 financial year and forecasting another significant loss in 2021.

Although employees were given the opportunity to lodge an in-house bid in the hope of saving their jobs, the proposal did not deliver the same cost-savings as those of specialist ground handlers including Swissport, Menzies and dnata.

It’s understood the Transport Workers Union’s “theoretical” bid actually reduced the workforce by 900 roles without any details on where those positions would come from or the impact to operations.

Another proposal from employees at the various airports involved including Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, promised $18m in savings, well short of the third party providers’ offer of a $103m annual saving.

Qantas Domestic and International chief executive Andrew David said it was “another tough day” for the airline and particularly the ground handling teams and their families.

“We thank every one of them for their professionalism and contribution over the years supporting our customers and operations,” Mr David said.

“Unfortunately, Covid has turned aviation upside down. Airlines around the world are having to make dramatic decisions in order to survive and the damage will take years to repair.”

He said while there had been some good news recently with domestic borders, international travel was not expected to return to pre-Covid levels until at least 2024.

“We have a massive job ahead of us to repay debt and we know our competitors are aggressively cutting costs to emerge leaner,” said Mr David.

“The TWU’s in-house bid claimed that significant savings could be made but it failed to outline sufficient practical detail on how this might be achieved, despite us requesting this information multiple times throughout the process.

“Even with the involvement of a large accounting firm (EY), the bid falls well short of what the specialist external providers were able to come up with.”

TWU national secretary Michael Kaine said the decision by Qantas was devastating.

“This is a dark day as Qantas management rejects a thorough and competitive bid by its highly skilled and dedicated workers to keep their own jobs,” Mr Kaine said.

“Qantas workers have worked hard over recent months with EY to find millions of dollars in cost savings and efficiencies. EY advised us our bid was competitive in comparison to other contractors. To reject its own workers like this is spiteful and will hurt the airline deeply.”

He said families across Australia were now facing a grim Christmas where “the future lay at the end of a Centrelink queue”.

“To suggest this bid and its cost savings was ‘theoretical’ is an absolute insult to the time and effort which has been put in by workers,” said Mr Kaine.

The external providers selected already conducted ground handling for Qantas and Jetstar at 55 airports around the country, with the additional contracts to cover the remaining ten airports.

They included Swissport at Sydney and Melbourne domestic, and Canberra Airport, Menzies at Cairns, Darwin, Brisbane Domestic and Perth and dnata at Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne International Airports and Townsville.

Mr David said the new providers would be in place by the first quarter of the New Year, and it would be up to them whether they re-employed the Qantas ground handlers.

“I would expect that given their experience, a number of them will be attractive to these third party suppliers,” Mr David said.

“Our experience is that ex-Qantas people out there in the marketplace are well sought after.”