👉 Background: Qantas is Australia's national airline, founded way back in 1920. In fact, it is the world’s third oldest airline that is still running.

👉 What happened: During peak-COVID in 2020, Qantas made 1,821 ground workers ‘redundant’. Shortly after the redundancy, it outsourced these roles to contractors. Last year, the Federal Court ruled that this redundancy was illegal and Qantas agreed to pay $120 million to the affected workers.  

👉 What else: Now, Federal Court judge has hit Qantas with a record $90 million penalty, the biggest penalty ever under the Fair Work Act. $50 million of the penalty will go towards funding the Transport Workers Union to fund future unfair dismissal cases.

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‍What's the key learning?

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‍💡The power dynamic between corporates and unions may be shifting and the legal battleground just got a lot more intense. Unions have traditionally relied on membership fees and donations to fund legal battles and as a result, it only picked the cases it could afford to win.

💡 But the $50 million sent to the Transport Workers Union means they suddenly have deeper pockets to investigate breaches... so you can imagine many more cases coming to the forefront.

💡Qantas isn’t the first company that has dealt with wage and employment issues over the past decade:

• Melbourne Uni underpaid more than 25,000 employees to the tune of $72 million
• George Calombaris’ restaurant group, MAdE Establishment, admitted to underpaying employees nearly $8 million
• Aussie burger joint, Grill’d, also underpaid their trainee staff‍