Qantas will move roles overseas and cut 850 positions under an outsourcing deal with tech firm Accenture.
The airline said hundreds of roles would go “over coming years, with the first changes expected to be in place by mid-2027”.
Some roles will be outsourced to Accenture workers in India.
Qantas Group CEO Vanessa Hudson sent an all-staff email announcing the cuts, describing it as “hard news for some”.
Ms Hudson said the redundancies were part of a new multi-year partnership with Accenture and would affect corporate roles within the organisation.
The changes will start in the finance, procurement and marketing teams, with some services currently delivered by those teams being outsourced to Accenture and “delivered mostly by its teams in India and some in Australia”, the email read.
Qantas said it would look to redeploy as many people as possible.
Some Qantas jobs will be outsourced to digital consultancy firm Accenture. (Reuters: Chris Helgren)
“Like every airline, we run on technology built up over decades for a different era, including more than 1,000 legacy applications that were never designed to work together,” Ms Hudson said.
“It will allow us to unlock innovation faster and accelerate our use of AI, with lasting benefits.”
Qantas shares rose more than 6 per cent today after the news.
Union told no plan for jobs to be offshored
The Australian Services Union (ASU) said it was meeting with its Qantas members today.
ASU Assistant National Secretary Scott Cowen said the union had been working with Qantas for months after first hearing about the proposed deal.
“We were told at the time that there was no plan for 1,000 jobs to be offshored and yet today staff have been told by Vanessa Hudson that up to 850 jobs could be sent offshore,” he said.
“So this is really shocking news for our members.”
He said the union would be working closely with members to fight for every job, with most of the cuts affecting jobs based in Sydney.
“We’ve seen time and time again through corporate Australia deals with global tech giants like Accenture suddenly there seems to be a mass need to be sending jobs offshore,” he said.
Calls for regulation
Scott Cowen says Qantas had a social obligation to protect local jobs. (ABC News: Patrick Stone)
Telstra last year announced a $700 million joint venture with Accenture, with plans to slash 209 jobs revealed earlier this year. Coles is reported to have up to 1,000 jobs moved offshore after partnering with the firm.
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Mr Cowen said without intervention and regulation, he was concerned other companies would follow in Qantas’s footsteps.
He said big corporate entities like Qantas that had received taxpayer-funded subsidies over the years had a social obligation to look after their workforce.
“Ultimately with less people in employment locally, that’s going to have ramifications right across every community in Australia for every job that is lost,” he said.
“And once a job is lost and sent offshore, it’s going to be very hard to get back.”
Qantas last week announced plans to cut Qantas and Jetstar flight routes. (Supplied: Mick Horsnell)
On Friday last week, Qantas Group posted a market update stating cuts to 4 per cent of Qantas and Jetstar flights were on the horizon.
In the update, posted ahead of its general meeting, it said it could “adjust fares and capacity in response to higher fuel costs”.
In the 2025/26 financial year, the group reported a $1.29 billion statutory profit after tax.
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