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The Australian Services Union (ASU) has lambasted Qantas over “greed-driven” profits as head-office staff are laid off.
The ASU, which is currently butting heads with the Flying Kangaroo over job cuts at the airline’s Mascot HQ, said it is “disappointed that Qantas has announced further redundancies at the same time they are unveiling a massive $1.46 billion [half-yearly] profit”.
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“It is the height of corporate greed to boast about billion-dollar earnings to the market while showing the door to the very people who delivered those results,” said ASU assistant national secretary Scott Cowen.
“While we are working with the airline and hope that our next round of discussions will lead to better outcomes, we are frustrated that we’ve had to drag Qantas back to the negotiating table to protect our members’ jobs.
“Qantas has taken a profits first, workers last approach to everything it does, announcing job cuts first and consulting stakeholders later. They need to change their approach and work with unions and members from the outset to protect the well-being of their staff.”
As originally reported by The Sydney Morning Herald, the tension comes after Qantas last week terminated 30 roles at its Mascot location to simplify its management structure. The ASU said it was told that those roles would be replaced by AI, which the airline says is not the case.
According to Cowen, Qantas has a “documented history of outsourcing and offshoring Australian jobs”, pointing to last year’s decision to outsource freight operations at Western Sydney Airport.
“At a time of strong profits, Qantas should be backing Australian workers and skills, not cutting local jobs while expanding offshore operations,” he said.
“This pattern of cutting local expertise to juice the bottom line is what leads to the service chaos and delays that travellers have sadly come to expect from the airline.
“Any move to replace skilled head-office staff with automation or AI without rigorous testing and worker consultation risks further damaging the airline’s operational capacity. You cannot automate the decades of experience that our members bring to keeping this airline running.
“Our priority right now is ensuring that Qantas values its current people and adopts our proposal to keep them in their jobs. We met with the airline yesterday, and will be continuing these discussions throughout the week to demand that Qantas put its record profits to work by investing in its people rather than cutting them.”
While Qantas has denied that AI will replace the roles, it did not rule out that other technologies played a part.
“We advised the Australian Services Union on Wednesday last week of the changes and are meeting with them on Monday to discuss ways to reduce the impact on affected employees,” a Qantas spokesperson told the Sydney Morning Herald.
“This includes considering redeployment opportunities into one of the newly created roles resulting from these changes, or into other roles across the group.”
Qantas in the first half of the 2025-26 financial year increased pre-tax profits by $71 million over the same time last year, with statutory profit after tax up $2 million to $925 million.
