There is a tribe of lawyers who specialise in this sort of bastardry in a few of the big law firms. They make it into an art form. They will harass an individual or group of employees way past any limits of humanity, law and reason as long as they are paid.
You should also be aware that just because Qantas is doing something with the advice of a law firm does not necessarily make it "legal". It may require a court to decide legality.
The major problem with using such firms, from a management perspective, is that they need to be kept on a very short leash or they can do permanent damage to employee / employer relationships.
Qantas should think long and hard about what they are doing before they cause permanent damage, if they haven't already.
By way of example, I was once asked by the Board of a certain company to inflict a new employment contract, written by a well known legal wolf pack, on some Seventy employees working the division I was running.
This little gem contained draconian provisions one of which was to the effect that if the company had to go to court to enforce the agreement with the employee, the employee would pay all the companys legal costs! The real kicker was that the employee agreed that they would never go to court to enforce the agreement against the company!
I took one look and sent a copy to a good legal friend who practiced in such areas. He checked with a few more legal eagles. The advice I received was that the agreement was so biased against the employee that it was unenforceable and that any judge shown it would have gone apoplectic especially regarding the latter clause I quoted.
I went back to the Directors and told them "If you want to strengthen this agreement, water it down."
Last edited by Sunfish; 23rd Nov 2010 at 17:10.