Qantas fined over employee roster changes
Qantas has been ordered to pay $6000 to its employees for changing rosters without their agreement.
The airline’s customer centre in Auckland changed its fixed roster to a more irregular one, because it claimed that would achieve work life balance. But some employees found this was not the case.
Unite Union and Qantas Airways had a collective agreement from April 2015 till September 2017. Under the agreement, unions can represent employees in the employer’s workplace.
But the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) found as Qantas failed to attempt to resolve the dispute, it breached the workers’ collective agreements with the Union.
In early 2015, Qantas employees worked on rotating roasters that had them working three lots of six days in a row and then one week of five days for 12 weeks before changing.
Later that year, Qantas introduced a preference based roster that enabled employees to work five fixed days in a row followed by two days off, after a popular vote from employees drove the change.
But a year after the fixed-day roster had been implemented, Qantas proposed a change back to a rotating roster, this time rotating every nine weeks.
The union on behalf of four workers, Prince Khobragade, Ashley Toetu, Chad Nicholson and Kalo Prescott, rejected the proposal to revert back to the old roster.
Despite there being no agreement, Qantas went ahead and change rosters in May 2017.
Qantas said the preferential roster change was a trial and there had been no promises made to staff ensuring no later changes could be made.
But the ERA said Qantas had not made any mention of the preferential roster being a trial or having any end date in the information provided to employees.