Originally Posted by
machtuk
It's the way of doing business, max profits for the smallest outlay! Airlines exist to make money, they are not there to make everyone happy or doing it for fun!
I think you’ve over-simplified it.
If, pre-COVID, Alan had made ALL 2500 ground staff redundant and effectively hired most of them back through contracting companies, whether these companies were owned by Qantas or not, he would have been highly in breach of Australian workplace law. Qantas would have been taken to court, and lost. There is plenty of case law for this. (Yes, the equivalent can be legally achieved over time through a thousand cuts, but not in a case lot like this).
He is doing it now, presumably on the basis that these people don’t have “useful work” anyway. So he has, effectively, found a loophole that he can capitalise on, free of litigation. In the “crisis”, he has discovered something to his advantage that he never would have been able to do otherwise.
The Australian concept of “stand-down”, which was only intended for a short-term stoppage, is gathering new consequences daily. This move is not in the spirit of “keeping jobs” as publicly advertised by Alan. This move is an opportunistic “don’t waste a crisis” kick in the guts for all Qantas staff, and I hope the TWU expose him for it in the media. I actually thought he was doing well until now.