More Qantas roles may go

Airline aims to avoid compulsory redundancies

QANTAS Airways pilots have been told the airline will need to reduce its workforce in response to the devastating impact of COVID-19 but it will try to avoid compulsory redundancies.

Chief executive Alan Joyce is expected to deliver an update on the airline’s future in the next week to provide more certainly for the group’s 30,000 employees.

More than 25,000 remain stood down although up to 2000 will return to work as Qantas and budget offshoot Jetstar increase domestic flights in coming weeks.

With international services now scrapped until October, the future is much less clear for employees in that part of the business, particularly those who crew Boeing 747s and A380s.

Qantas is not expected to return its five remaining 747s to service and has suspended the planned refurbishment of six of its 12 A380s.

In a webinar for pilots on Monday, Qantas International chief Tino La Spina said he viewed “compulsory redundancy” as a failure on the airline’s part. Qantas would seek to manage numbers in other ways, Mr La Spina said.

These included voluntary redundancy, early retirement and reaching an agreement with pilots to be paid less for flying fewer than minimum hours.

A pilot who spoke on condition of anonymity said it made sense for Qantas to try to keep as much of its highly skilled workforce for as long as possible. “I think in some respects, Qantas don’t want to go down that road (of compulsory redundancy) because of the massive training churn it would cause, as well as the cash it would burn,” he said.

“That we may not get some of those people back probably plays into their thinking as well, though probably not as much as the cost of getting rid of them.”

The pilot said there was no mention made of the JobKeeper allowance that has sustained many employees since late March but is due to end in September.

A number of other international carriers, including Air New Zealand, Emirates, Ryanair, British Airways and Lufthansa, have announced plans to reduce their workforces by between 5 per cent and 50 per cent.

Emirates is expected to shed 30,000 staff from its 105,000-strong workforce and British Airways is looking at a reduction of 12,000 positions out of a total 42,000. Lufthansa has flagged 22,000 job losses across its European-wide group that employs 135,000.

Air New Zealand will shrink by 30 per cent, or 4000 jobs.