The COVID crisis has driven the need to examine how these services can be delivered more efficiently.
The three initiatives employees were briefed on today are:
Customer facing team members at airports are not impacted or in scope for the reviews.
Today's announcement follows a
Job losses of at least 6,000 have already been announced as part of rightsizing and restructuring the business in response to border closures and more permanent structural changes to the aviation industry. (Possible job losses of up to 2,500 as a result of today's announcement would be in addition to the 6,000 figure.) Planned capital investment is also being significantly reduced, including the deferral of aircraft orders.
In line with industrial obligations,
COMMENTS FROM
'This is the greatest challenge the aviation industry has ever faced and airlines have to change how they operate to ensure they can survive long-term.
'We've already taken drastic action, with more than 220 aircraft grounded, the vast majority of our workforce stood down and assets mortgaged to raise cash. Right now, our domestic capacity is at 20 per cent of pre-COVID levels and international travel is expected to take years to recover.
'We know travel restrictions will lift eventually, but the market will be very different. Every airline will come through this much leaner and more efficient, and we have to be able to compete if we're going to survive.
'Outsourcing this work to specialist ground handlers would save an estimated
'Today's announcement will be very tough for our hard-working teams, most of whom have already been stood down for months without work. This obviously adds to the uncertainty but this is the unfortunate reality of what COVID-19 has done to our industry.'
COMMENTS FROM JETSTAR GROUP CEO
'We realise this decision will be extremely difficult news for our ground handling team and their families at what is already a very challenging time.
'But unfortunately this ongoing crisis means we have to make some really tough decisions which impact our team members who have provided a consistent and professional operation over many years.
'Every major airline around the world uses these specialist providers to support their operations. These ground handlers provide these services to many airlines at airports, rather than just one, and provide scalable resources, which makes them very cost effective.
'Contracting this work out also reduces the capital spend required each year. As an example,
'The
The 10 airports that
In line with their enterprise bargaining agreement, employees will have an opportunity to provide a bid for the work and representatives be provided paid time and support to do this. They will need to demonstrate they can deliver on the objectives
Should the decision be taken to outsource this work, there may be flow on impacts to other parts of the business that support ground handling (e.g. rostering and ground equipment maintenance).
These changes are in addition to job losses announced by
JETSTAR GROUND HANDLING
Jetstar has decided to outsource ground handling at
Affected employees will be provided a redundancy package and be provided with support to transition to new jobs outside the business. We expect there will be a range of opportunities for impacted team members with suppliers in the sector as the industry recovers.
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