Company executives defended their CEO amid widespread customer service problems
Qantas maintained its stance that no other ASX-listed company has demonstrated the same “restraint” as it did regarding executive remuneration after the airline’s chief executive pocketed an estimated 15% pay rise. According to The Advertiser, the airline’s chief executive, Alan Joyce, brought home $2.17 million during the last financial year and was paid approximately $5.5 million, including more than $3 million in bonus shares, which could be sold if the airline gains profit by August 2023.
Recently, Qantas corporate affairs group executive Andrew McGinnes and general counsel Andrew Finch were grilled at a Senate inquiry, which came at a time when the airline’s reputation was tainted over prevalent customer service problems.
“You will not find a company in Australia or certainly not one on the ASX that has exhibited the restraint that Qantas has,” McGinnes told the hearing, defending Joyce’s pay packet.
Joyce’s background in the company
Based on reports, Joyce was the lone incumbent CEO in a top 100 ASX-listed company who did not receive a bonus for the past two financial years. Before the pandemic, the Qantas chief executive was regularly the highest-paid CEO in Australia, and Joyce’s raise last year was believed to be caused by his base salary coming back to its standard level, The Advertiser noted.
It further said that during Joyce’s 14-year term at Qantas, he had supervised hostile cost-cutting measures, which included sacking thousands of the company’s employees during the pandemic. The news outlet said many of these employees were either rehired or replaced through subcontracting to internal shell businesses and external labour-hire firms.
Among the sacked employees were 1,700 baggage handlers whose employment termination was found unlawful and partly influenced, as several of Qantas’ own ground crew were union members with more solid bargaining powers.
Qantas’ defence
While the airline is seeking to challenge the finding in the High Court, McGinnes and Finch recently insisted that Qantas’ act of outsourcing workers and employing new workers on “modern” awards were needed for the company’s survival, according to The Advertiser.
The news outlet reported that the company’s use of external labour-hire firms was only an act of “managing resourcing requirements” and that casual workers were paid even more than permanent employees should be.
Ultimately, McGinnes asserted that “no one is trying to take” the current “grandfathered” pay and conditions from longer-standing employees, and no Qantas employee had their income “practically cut.”
The two company senior executives made their remarks at a Senate inquiry concerning the proposed amendment of the Fair Work Act, which would “require that labour-hire workers covered by certain modern awards are offered the same or greater rates of pay than directly employed workers,” The Advertiser reported.
