QANTAS ILLEGALLY SACKED WORKERS FACE 5th CHRISTMAS WAITING FOR JUSTICE AS COMPENSATION MEDIATION TALKS FAIL

1800 illegally sacked Qantas workers are once again facing the devastating Christmas news of having to go back to court after court-ordered mediation yesterday to finalise and streamline compensation payments owed to these workers failed. 

After four years of Qantas using every possible avenue of appeal to attempt to deny workers justice, and one year since the High Court confirmed the sackings were illegal, workers have been once again let down.

Qantas previously argued it should not have to pay workers any compensation at all, an argument the Federal Court rejected.

Over the last two years Qantas has made over $4.5 billion in underlying profits.

The Court has ordered Qantas to pay economic loss for up to a year after workers were illegally outsourced, as well as loss for hurt and suffering based on amounts determined for three test cases of $30,000, $40,000 and $100,000.

TWU National Secretary Michael Kaine said that after four years of fighting for appropriate compensation, workers had once again been left without a resolution.

“1800 workers will now be spending their fifth Christmas with the prospect of having to go without justice since they were illegally outsourced by Qantas. Over more than four years, these workers have gone through family break-downs, been forced to sell their homes and suffered immense anxiety, all while Qantas continued to evade accountability. These workers just want to get on with their lives after four years of anguish and stress.

“Rather than focusing on properly compensating the people it’s put through hell, Qantas has spent the past four years appealing to every court in the land to deny them justice. There is a long road ahead for Qantas to regain the trust it’s lost with the Australian public and it starts with fairly compensating the people it illegally sacked.

“These workers have been victims of a systematic attempt to decimate good aviation jobs. Not only must Qantas now compensate them fairly once and for all, it must work to rebuild the jobs it has spent a decade destroying.

“We will continue to see more of this behaviour from privatised airlines and airports without proper regulation. We need a Safe and Secure Skies Commission to hold companies like Qantas to account to ensure the cycle of trashing jobs and service standards ends once and for all.”

NOTES

• The detail of court-ordered mediation is confidential
• The TWU continues to rebuild jobs decimated under Alan Joyce at Qantas, including through:
• An agreement on Monday with dnata, a company which received part of the Qantas outsourced work. Ground workers averted 24-hour strike action after winning an agreement including a commitment from the company to pursue industry reform with the TWU, and well as improvements to pay and conditions
• Same Job Same Pay in-principle agreement at Jetstar which would see cabin crew pay lift by $7000 for an average worker at Altara and Team Jetstar
• Same Job Same Pay applications for Qantas Freight workers at Whymap and Programmed, who are employed directly on the Award and some of whom receive base pay of under $50,000

Media contact: Emily Mead 0432 552 895