Qantas to pay $120m to more than 1,800 baggage handlers illegally sacked during pandemic
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Level of compensation – and looming penalties – mean cost of airline’s outsourcing saga has ballooned past budgeted figure. Qantas will pay $120m in compensation to 1820 baggage handlers the airline illegally sacked in 2020 as the full cost of its controversial outsourcing decision continues to grow.
On Tuesday, Qantas and the Transport Workers Union (TWU) announced they had finally reached an agreement over the payout, following a years-long legal battle that included the airline appealing the initial decision to the full bench of the federal court and later the high court – both of which were unsuccessful.
After losing its final appeal, the two parties spent more than a year in mediation and remedy hearings to determine how much Qantas would have to pay the outsourced workers for economic losses linked to lost wages. To agree on a final compensation payout, the federal court examined test cases of three outsourced workers with differing circumstances. In October, justice Michael Lee determined that individual compensation amounts should range from $30,000 to $100,000.
Lee found that the workers would have been retrenched one year later in 2021 anyway due to the airline’s “laser-like” focus on cutting costs, capping the economic component of compensation calculations at 12 months. The test case compensation figures also took into consideration “non-economic loss” suffered, related to hardship and distress caused by the airline’s decision.
