TWU calls for Goyder’s head after High Court rules against Qantas

afr.com:

Qantas has lost its battle to overturn a Federal Court ruling that it illegally sacked nearly 1700 workers during the pandemic, with the full bench of the High Court dismissing its appeal.

The unanimous verdict follows a bitter two-year legal battle between the Transport Workers Union and 1683 Qantas ground staff who worked at 10 airports across Australia until the airline dismissed them in 2021.

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“The outsourcing decision was ‘adverse action’ within the meaning of the Fair Work Act 2009 because it altered the position of the affected employees of Qantas and [its subsidiary] Qantas Ground Services to their prejudice,” the majority judgment by the High Court read.

Qantas had argued the sackings were not illegal because the decision was made before one group of workers’ enterprise agreement had ended, and the second group had not yet entered into negotiations. It also argued that the prospect of workers taking protected industrial action was not time-bound.

But the High Court said both contentions were flawed.

“This framing is flawed in two ways. First, it mistakenly implies that a mere ‘appreciation’ of the possible future exercise of a workplace right at the time of taking adverse action would amount to a substantial and operative reason for taking adverse action,” the court determined.

“Second, it denies the additional reasons for the outsourcing decision the subject of the appeal, which go beyond both an appreciation of a possible effect of the outsourcing decision and a belief as to the possible existence of workplace rights in the future.”

The TWU called for Qantas