Using Same Job Same Pay laws passed by the Albanese government, the TWU has reached an in-principle agreement with Qantas Freight which will see significant jumps in pay for labour hire workers at Wymap and Programmed working side-by-side with directly hired ground crew.
For Wymap and Programmed workers, increases to base rates, allowances, overtime and shift penalties will mean average annual increases of around $5000, with some up to $8000.
Qantas now employs workers through 38 subsidiaries and labour companies, with many of the subsidiaries set up deliberately to suppress wages and conditions. In 2020 it illegally outsourced its entire ground operations, with the airline agreeing last year to a compensation fund of $120 million.
Qantas recently posted $1.4 billion in underlying profits for the first half of the financial year.
Qantas is still relying on outsourced work at companies like Swissport, which has an appalling record on pay and safety, to perform ground work, with the TWU calling on the airline to fund fair standards right throughout its supply chain.
As part of its broader strategy to reverse the decimation of aviation jobs by Qantas, recently the TWU reached Same Job Same Pay agreements at Altara and Team Jetstar for cabin crew working alongside directly-hired Jetstar workers. The agreement is now in affect for Team Jetstar workers, who will on average see annual pay rises of over $8000.
TWU National Secretary Michael Kaine said:
"At Qantas Freight where there are six groups of workers all doing the same job, but employed under different pay and conditions, we are one step closer to fairness.
"Qantas pioneered the strategy of paying people less to do the same job, and were a key reason these laws were necessary in the first place. These workers will now be thousands better off, as they should have been to start with.
"There is much more work to be done here. Across the Qantas supply chain, workers remain under huge pressure and poor conditions as a direct result of a decade of outsourcing and job-wrecking. While we are still seeing workers under appalling pay and safety conditions at companies like Swissport, Qantas will never recover to the airline it used to be.
"The fact that these laws were necessary in the first place shows how out of control our aviation industry is. We must have an independent decision-maker so that this industry is stable into the future for both passengers and workers."
The TWU will return to the Federal Court in May for hearings on penalties to Qantas for its illegal outsourcing of over 1800 ground workers.
