Originally Posted by
Angle of Attack
Surprise Surprise, we all knew it was wrong and now the outsourcing has been deemed illegal.
with the current ground handling disaster show and the Compensation and Fines that saving of several million
dollars Qantas was crapping on about during the event now looks like chicken feed, Heads need to roll and lots of them,
they don’t even have decent legal advice as it was wrong.
And yet, last time I looked, one of the three branches of government in the Commonwealth of Australia is the Judiciary, at the pinnacle of which resides the High Court (being the 'Federal Supreme Court' as it is described in the Constitution).
Qantas will appeal this to the High Court. This is not over yet, by a long shot.
The High Court will take the entire Constitutional aspect of this into consideration, in terms of commerce and trade and other commercial factors. I would be surprised if they don't overturn the lower courts but stand to be surprised if they don't - at stake here is a principle that a business should have the right to determine how work is performed and by whom.
The TWU weren't so concerned about the workers and the propriety of how things were being conducted when every opportunity to screw the company was taken advantage of for decades. No thought was given to the fact that one day, this might just become a bit too expensive to continue.
I don't buy the nonsense about contractors being universally incapable of the same level of service as in-house, Qantas has employed contractors everywhere outside Australia for it's entire international presence - over decades - and many places in Australia too. This notion that all contractors are incapable belies companies like SkyStar (now owned by Menzies) who were higher quality than most in house operations or HallMark in the USA which is partly owned by Qantas in fact and is the ground hander of choice, certainly at LAX and SFO and a number of other airports on the West Coast.
I don't see shareholders doing a runner from QAN, they seem to be pretty happy with the way the company is being run and the rise in the price of their shares. I'm guessing they're happier than the former VAH shareholders who walked away with nothing.