The former Virgin chief executive who helmed the airline through COVID-19 when Qantas illegally sacked its employees weighed in on the pressure felt at the time.
The national carrier on Friday lost its final appeal in the High Court over two Federal Court rulings that found it unlawfully outsourced 1,700 workers during the pandemic in 2020.
The cohort of sacked workers included several ground and fleet presentation across 10 Australian airports, who were told their jobs had been axed for commercial purposes.
Former Virgin boss Paul Scurrah told Sky News Australia that Qantas made an “extreme decision” under “extreme pressure”.
“I’ve always believed when you’re the number one player in duopoly, or a near duopoly, you are expected to by your owners, your shareholders, your stakeholders to use that position in a very confident and forceful manner without pushing it too far and occasionally that can go a little far and may come across as arrogance,” he said on Friday.
“What I see now is the consequences of some extreme decisions that were made under extreme pressure in what were the darkest days of the airline industry.
“Often, decisions were being made often when there was only a skeleton management team was in place and it had far reaching consequences long after that happened.”
Mr Scurrah, who now heads the Pacific National, said Qantas and Virgin were in “slightly different circumstances” and have historically had different views.
“We, with the weaker balance sheet, always had an eye on survival only. I think Qantas, with a stronger position and a view to the future, I recall them having an eye on survival and potential opportunism to come out leaner,” he said.
“I also recall if Virgin got through it and got through administration, Alan [Joyce] would’ve been worried that we had a well restructured cost base because of the protection of voluntary administration that he would’ve been worried about when making these decisions.”
Mr Scurrah, however, acknowledged the context of the time and the pressure airlines across the globe were under.
“What I do know though, through that experience, is the extreme pressure boards, CEOs and executives were under to make decisions that none of us ever contemplated having to make when we would’ve taken on the job,” he said.
“It was the most unprecedented crisis the airline industry has ever seen globally and there were decisions that all CEOS of all airlines around the world may look back on, in the cold hard light of day, and say ‘in different circumstances I wouldn’t have made that decision’.
“They’re a strong brand Qantas, they’ve done a lot of good over the years, they’ve recovered very well through COVID, they’ve got some issues right now that I think they will bounce back from and there are decisions that I don’t know what they were thinking when they made them but I’m sure they will bounce back.”
Qantas, since Friday’s court ruling, said it “acknowledges and accepts” the outcome and made an apology.
“As we have said from the beginning, we deeply regret the personal impact the outsourcing decision had on all those affected and we sincerely apologise for that,” Qantas said in a statement.
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