King Warns Qantas Job Cuts Could Damage Its Social License
Australia’s transport minister criticized Qantas’s plan to eliminate 850 local jobs as the airline automates and outsources back-office work, mostly to India. Catherine King urged the company to work with unions to retrain and redeploy workers, while Qantas said it would seek new roles for as many affected staff as possible.
Australian Transport Minister Catherine King warned that Qantas’s plan to cut 850 local jobs while automating back-office work could cause significant damage to the airline’s social license. The government criticized the decision, which will shift work to professional services firm Accenture, with back-office functions moving mostly to India.
King called the move “incredibly disappointing.”
Qantas said the changes are intended to modernize its systems, processes and data. The airline said some in-house processes would be analyzed and simplified in India, with automation added before the work returns to Qantas’s Australian operations at a later date.
King said the airline needs to prepare for artificial intelligence (AI), but questioned outsourcing work related to that effort overseas. “I think the union is right to be disappointed that it’s resulting in 850 job losses,” she said.
She urged Qantas to work with unions to retrain and redeploy affected workers. “I think investing in the workforce that has basically built it should be a priority for Qantas,” King said.
Qantas Chief Executive Vanessa Hudson said the company could not carry out the changes alone. “Reinvention at this scale is not possible to do on our own ... because we cannot hire at the pace this work needs,” she said.
The Australian Services Union, which represents some affected workers, questioned the airline’s motives. “We need to make sure that these AI announcements and job cuts are genuine and not a Trojan horse for widespread offshoring,” assistant national secretary Scott Cowen said.
The union also said Qantas had told it there was no plan to offshore jobs when it learned of the back-office modernization project. Qantas rejected that account, saying: “We have never given assurances to the union that some jobs wouldn’t move offshore.”
In an email to staff, Hudson said Qantas would seek to redeploy as many people as possible through retraining, reskilling and opportunities elsewhere in the group, including new roles in Australia. The company said it continues to engage with the union.
King said Qantas should work with unions to find ways to retain workers as it builds AI capabilities in Australia. “It shouldn’t just be an exercise in taking costs out of the business,” she said.
