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Qantas took unlawful adverse action when deciding to outsource thousands of positions to prevent workers from engaging in industrial action, despite those workers not having a workplace right to take such action at the time, the High Court has ruled.

The Court found that taking adverse action against a person to prevent them exercising a workplace right contravenes section 340(1)(b) of the Fair Work Act, regardless of whether that person has the right at the time of the action.

Qantas did not avoid the operation of this section by taking the adverse action "prior to the existence of the workplace rights the exercise of which [it] sought to thwart", the Court said.

In November 2020, while its operations were severely affected by the pandemic, Qantas Airways announced its decision to outsource its ground-handling operations at 10 Australian airports, informing the Transport Workers Union it had rejected its in-house bid to retain services for around 2,000 Qantas and Qantas Ground Services (QGS) employees...