The discerning B&T readers — AKA you! — have spoken and confirmed what we all thought we knew. Alan Joyce has trashed Qantas’ reputation.
After almost 1,400 votes were cast on our on-site poll asking our dear readers whether they thought Joyce had brought Qantas’ once-impeccable reputation crashing down, more than a third agreed.
However, 401 readers felt as though Joyce was just a passenger in the debacle, believing that Qantas had already received enough bad press of late and that he couldn’t have made its reputation any worse. As a result, the brand will be fine.
But, some 26 per cent of B&T readers are kind-natured souls and felt that Qantas — like every other brand — deserves a second chance. Even despite the failings of its CEO.
Perhaps most concerningly, 8.3 per cent of B&T readers seemed completely flummoxed by the premise of the question and answered “Who’s Alan Joyce and what’s a Qantas?”
But, despite Joyce’s departure as CEO last week, it seems as though the airline is still experiencing some turbulence. Earlier today, it lost a case in the High Court after sacking 1,700 baggage handlers and cleaners during the COVID pandemic.
The jobs of baggage handlers and cleaners at 10 airports were outsourced and the airline said that it needed to make the changes after its business plummeted by more than 90 per cent during the pandemic.
However, the Transport Workers’ Union (TWU) told the High Court that the airline had also been motivated to head off industrial action when things returned to normal and that the sackings were in breach of the Fair Work Act, which prohibited actions that interfered with a worker’s rights.
“The Joyce regime has been toppled, but the airline cannot achieve the reset necessary for its survival under the same board that resided over the largest case of illegal sackings in Australian corporate history,” TWU national secretary Michael Kaine said outside court.
