Qantas to axe 850 jobs

[Melburnian1]

This extract from 'The Australian's' online feed is paywalled so I cannot provide a link that'll work, but I subscribe:

(No doubt Minister Catherine King's CL membership will continue and she'll always use it. Hypocritical.):

Transport Minister Catherine King says she is disappointed by Qantas’ decision to slash 850 workers from its operations, confirming Labor would have considered purchasing a stake in the airline during the pandemic.
Accusing the Australian airline of operating a business model based on outsourcing its workforce, Ms King warned the cuts could damage Qantas’ reputation, urging management to invest in its Australian workforce.
“I think the union is right to be disappointed that it’s resulting in 850 job losses. I think investing in the workforce that has basically built it should be a priority for Qantas,” she told Radio National.
“This has been a model that Qantas has been using for some time, outsourcing jobs, no longer having them in-house. It’s not the only company that obviously does that, but the scale of it when Qantas does it is substantial.”
Reflecting on a $2.7bn bailout for the airline and previous job cuts during the pandemic, Ms King claimed if Labor were in government at the time the party would have seriously considered purchasing an equity stake in Qantas.
“I think certainly when it comes to Qantas, that would have been one of the things that we probably, had we been in government during COVID, put on the table to them as well,” she said.
“It’s by law required to have 51 per cent Australian ownership, and that continues. That’s obviously a benefit to Australia, but a constraint it has on its capital raising.”

 

[747sardine]

This extract from 'The Australian's' online feed is paywalled so I cannot provide a link that'll work, but I subscribe:

(No doubt Minister Catherine King's CL membership will continue and she'll always use it. Hypocritical.):

Transport Minister Catherine King says she is disappointed by Qantas’ decision to slash 850 workers from its operations, confirming Labor would have considered purchasing a stake in the airline during the pandemic.
Accusing the Australian airline of operating a business model based on outsourcing its workforce, Ms King warned the cuts could damage Qantas’ reputation, urging management to invest in its Australian workforce.
“I think the union is right to be disappointed that it’s resulting in 850 job losses. I think investing in the workforce that has basically built it should be a priority for Qantas,” she told Radio National.
“This has been a model that Qantas has been using for some time, outsourcing jobs, no longer having them in-house. It’s not the only company that obviously does that, but the scale of it when Qantas does it is substantial.”
Reflecting on a $2.7bn bailout for the airline and previous job cuts during the pandemic, Ms King claimed if Labor were in government at the time the party would have seriously considered purchasing an equity stake in Qantas.
“I think certainly when it comes to Qantas, that would have been one of the things that we probably, had we been in government during COVID, put on the table to them as well,” she said.
“It’s by law required to have 51 per cent Australian ownership, and that continues. That’s obviously a benefit to Australia, but a constraint it has on its capital raising.”

Yep. No politician is going to rock the boat to hard and risk their CL membership. It really does pay for itself. But it's not corruption, no sir.

 

[TheRealTMA]

Very apt article IMHO

"I can tell you why decisions like this get made in two short words – executive bonuses. When bonuses are tied to profits, company leaders make short-term decisions that benefit themselves. And the cost of long-term brand damage is really difficult to quantify, so they don’t bother."

I can tell you why Qantas sent 850 jobs to India in just two words

When bonuses are tied to profits, company leaders make short-term decisions that benefit themselves.

www.theage.com.au

 

[fletty]

Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome

 

[TheRealTMA]

Qantas Rewards Taxpayer Generosity During Spicy Cough Era By Offshoring A Further 850 Jobs To India

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact Qantas has this week announced more job cuts in head office, with more than 850 jobs to be offshorred to India. The announcement has left many in the community wondering why, especially when we all had to tip in hundreds of millions of dollars

www.betootaadvocate.com

 

[trippin_the_rift]

Feel bad for those affected negatively, but equally happy for the 850 in India who now have a new job.

Don't forget the golden rule, folks - if you don't make 10x for the company than it costs them to employ you; you're a candidate to be fired at any point.
Job security doesn't exist today as it may have decades ago.

 

[SeatBackForward]

if you don't make 10x for the company

The issue with this thinking is that it only incentivises results that appear in the accounts. MANY things people do for businesses simply cannot be quantified. For example, having years of experience in knowing how to work a solution that simply isn't written in a training manual. Or here's one for Qantas' call centre - understanding your customers want to fly on planes...

 

[trippin_the_rift]

Just think how much Qantas could save by outsourcing the board and CEO to a third party that can be paid substantially less and requires fewer exorbitant bonuses!!!!

Boards are already using AI...

The issue with this thinking is that it only incentivises results that appear in the accounts. MANY things people do for businesses simply cannot be quantified. For example, having years of experience in knowing how to work a solution that simply isn't written in a training manual. Or here's one for Qantas' call centre - understanding your customers want to fly on planes...

Oh, I'm with you all the way on massive value outside of generating revenue.

For an airline where most folks are customer-facing, much of this is easily replaceable. There's always going to be a need for the top 1% of people in their field and those folks are going to make a lot of money being the expert in their space.

 

[Melburnian1]

Very apt article IMHO

"I can tell you why decisions like this get made in two short words – executive bonuses. When bonuses are tied to profits, company leaders make short-term decisions that benefit themselves. And the cost of long-term brand damage is really difficult to quantify, so they don’t bother."

I can tell you why Qantas sent 850 jobs to India in just two words

When bonuses are tied to profits, company leaders make short-term decisions that benefit themselves.

www.theage.com.au

Shareholders in ASX-listed companies have the power to reject annual remuneration reports.

Eventually, this can result in the Board having to redesign the 'package.'

 

[Q Class Plebeian]

I would have thought shareholders are the most dangerous and ravenous.

Shareholders only want profit. They certainly don't care about this outsourcing move, unless it is going to hit the share price in a permanently unfavourable way. Hell, shareholders will accept if a company killed people, so long as their profits stay intact and grow.

Profit by any means necessary: the war cry of the public shareholder.

Well you are entitled to your opinion and yes there are greedy shareholders both corporate ( the executive class again) and individuals .However lots of ordinary people own shares and if you have a superannuation fund it will be deriving a substantial amount of its member benefit from the share market. From Kanebridge News-A record 11.5 million Australians now invest beyond super and property, new ASX data shows — driven by ETFs, younger and female investors, and a growing reliance on AI for financial information.https://kanebridgenews.com/australians-are-investing-in-record-numbers-again.
I think you and I would agree on this point and not consider Qanats as the national carrier anymore.

 

[CaptJCool]

Qantas is the national carrier

Job security existed until it was privatised by Hawke/Keating

 

[stm1sydney]

Can't really blame Qantas for this. The costs and compliance overhead of employing people in Australia, thanks to the Albanese government, are skyrocketing. All businesses are desperate to trim costs in order to just survive in the current environment, and are looking to a technology solution instead of employing Australians, unfortunately.

 

[Quickstatus]

It is very simple

Just nationalise Qantas and let the Govt run the airline according to the principles of "spirit of Australia" whatever that means.

 

[dajop]

Can't really blame Qantas for this. The costs and compliance overhead of employing people in Australia, thanks to the Albanese government, are skyrocketing. All businesses are desperate to trim costs in order to just survive in the current environment, and are looking to a technology solution instead of employing Australians, unfortunately.

I suspect paying people 1/5th of what they get paid in Australia , using technology that is efficient and fast (so they don’t need to be in head office any more) has more to do with it than anything the government of the day has or hasn’t done. This is happening in all sorts of industries across many wealthy countries.

 

[Melburnian1]

I suspect paying people 1/5th of what they get paid in Australia , using technology that is efficient and fast (so they don’t need to be in head office any more) has more to do with it than anything the government of the day has or hasn’t done. This is happening in all sorts of industries across many wealthy countries.

The mammoth spending of the Federal and most State governments is crowding out private sector investment that used to be the major generator of jobs.

Money looks for a home: increasingly, that is not in Oz. The Albanese and some State Labor governments are decidedly anti-business and anti-private enterprise. Victoria is the worst: no wonder it's suffering in so many ways: retailers have said it's the standout poor performer for sales.

On top of that taxation in Australia is high. Arguably, with three levels, we are overgoverned.

 

[kookaburra75]

Can't really blame Qantas for this. The costs and compliance overhead of employing people in Australia, thanks to the Albanese government, are skyrocketing. All businesses are desperate to trim costs in order to just survive in the current environment, and are looking to a technology solution instead of employing Australians, unfortunately.

I'm not sure I agree with that. Qantas is a complex example though. GIven you have the 'old' Qantas and TAA/Australian Airlines when they were government owned, the wages and conditions are a real patchwork today, based on how long ago you joined one of the companies. And throw Telstra into that mix too as an example. The Two Airlines agreement certainly pushed up costs for the consumers, besides those on government contracts.

The world has changed massively since then, and the days of government owned national airlines is well and truly over, expect maybe for the ME3, but how companies adapt to change is the critical factor. Has Qantas shown any ability to adapt for the long term, as compared to short term-ism? I suspect the outsourcing of the IT function is a outcome of Qantas not investing in its IT backend over the years. Seeing Accenture in action close up over the years,I doubt whether this new arrangement will be a long term fix to make Qantas a 'better' company - and that is the sad thing for those people being let go who are better placed to find out long term fixes, rather than short term executive bonuses,