Laws bolstering employees’ protections shall be drafted by the Albanese authorities if the Excessive Courtroom guidelines in favour of Qantas over its choice to outsource greater than 1600 employees through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Qantas is interesting two rulings by the Federal Courtroom, which discovered the outsourcing of bags handlers, cleaners and floor employees was unlawful.
Earlier than the listening to started in Canberra in the present day, Labor senator Tony Sheldon, a former TWU nationwide secretary, mentioned if the court docket dominated in favour of the airline “the fast response shall be to draft laws”.
Senator and former union boss Tony Sheldon spoke in regards to the Qantas court docket case. Credit score: Kate Geraghty
“Fairly clearly, this (Truthful Work) laws was put in by the Australian public by the Australian parliament and the Australian parliament could have the ultimate say,” he instructed reporters.
Qantas was discovered to have breached the Truthful Work Act in outsourcing its floor operations to keep away from enterprise bargaining rights, after the Transport Staff’ Union introduced authorized motion in opposition to the provider.
Office Relations Minister Tony Burke is intervening within the case and has joined the union in responding to the attraction.
The airline argues it couldn’t have breached the office rights of the workers, as they weren’t entitled to take protected industrial motion on the time of the choice to outsource.
Justin Gleeson SC, for Qantas, instructed the court docket the airline’s income stream had been “shattered” by the pandemic which left it “bleeding money”.
A Qantas spokesman mentioned the airline’s capacity to legally outsource was to avoid wasting greater than $100 million a 12 months when its survival wasn’t assured.
“Once we made this choice we had been nonetheless within the depth of the pandemic and there was little or no certainty about when our restoration would start,” he mentioned.
AAP
