This shot obviously dates from 2017, at which time Qantas had its own baggage handlers on the payroll.

That situation changed in 2021 when Alan Joyce, the little piece of sh...enior management running Qantas, and someone whose hatred of unions strikes me as being pathological, arranged for the company to trouser massive amounts of taxpayer subsidies to keep people in jobs during the pandemic, while at the same time outsourcing 2000 ground handling jobs supposedly on the grounds that it would save $100 million annually.

In July 2021, the Federal Court ruled that the outsourcing was illegal on the grounds that "Qantas was in part driven by the fact that many of the axed workers were union members with stronger bargaining capabilities". Fast forward to when I am writing this in August 2022, and there are claims that up to 1 in 10 pieces of luggage are either not being loaded onto domestic aircraft, or are being lost. It is true that a shortage of baggage handlers is a worldwide issue since so many of them were sacked, sorry, "retrenched" (as if there is a difference when you no longer have a pay packet) during the pandemic and airlines are scrambling to replace them. And, of course, the people who previously worked in those jobs under the illusion that they would have job security have moved on to other areas that are perhaps physically less demanding, and they have no desire to return to work for companies which regarded them as being merely disposable assets. Imagine that!

And don't, just bloody DON'T tell me that this is for the benefit of the shareholders. I'm a Qantas shareholder, and let me tell you the returns are not great. You NEVER buy shares in an airline because it's a good investment, because it never is. You buy shares in airline because you want to participate in running a really cool business. And then you get something like Joyce appointed to run the place, a little creature which outsources everything to give himself and his cronies massive executive bonuses, which never filter through to the shareholders, and which certainly never filter through to the customers either because I've been on the receiving end of THAT side of the outsourcing as well.

So let's just say that sacking the guys in this photo and their colleagues DID save $100 million annually, not that I believe a word that comes out of Joyce's frontal orifice. How much do we then end up losing when people stop flying, or stop flying Qantas, because they can't be guaranteed of getting to their destination on time (been there, done that), can't be guaranteed of being united with their luggage when they arrive (plenty have been there, done that), and have to deal with offshored service desks for the Qantas currency card where the operators can't speak English properly, and can't support the currency cards properly leaving users without access to their funds in a foreign country? (I've had close second-hand experience of that, as well.)

How much, in short, is the alleged saving going to cost us in terms of disgruntled passengers receiving dysfunctional service from a demoralised, understaffed, undertrained workforce? I've said it before, and I'll say it again; #qantassucks.