‘Significant damage’: Transport minister warns Qantas over AI job cuts

Résumé détaillé

The federal government has criticised Qantas’ decision to outsource 850 jobs, mostly to India, as part of a process to automate them through AI as “incredibly disappointing”.…

The federal government has criticised Qantas’ decision to outsource 850 jobs, mostly to India, as part of a process to automate them through AI as “incredibly disappointing”.

Describing the outsourcing move as “part of the business model for Qantas for some time,” Transport Minister Catherine King said: “I think that we saw the last time that it engaged in this sort of level of outsourcing during COVID, that it did a significant amount of damage to its social license.”

Qantas said on Tuesday it will eliminate 850 local jobs, and send them to professional services firm Accenture, to “modernise its back-end systems, processes and data”, with back office functions “mostly” shifted to India.

The airline said that outsourcing the roles though Accenture will result in certain in-house processes being sent to India, where they would be analysed and simplified. Automation will be added, and then the process will be reincorporated into Qantas’ Australian operations at a later date.

In making the announcement, which drove its share price higher, CEO Vanessa Hudson said: “Reinvention at this scale is not possible to do on our own ... because we cannot hire at the pace this work needs.”

The announcement came as both immigration and the impact of AI have skyrocketed to the top of the national political conversation.

Speaking to the ABC, King questioned the plan to outsource the demand for the AI related work to another country, although acknowledged Qantas’ need to “get ahead of AI” and to modernise its platforms. “I think the union is right to be disappointed that it’s resulting in 850 job losses.”

“I think investing in the workforce that has basically built it should be a priority for Qantas.”

The Australian Services Union, representing some of the affected Qantas workers, expressed scepticism over Qantas’ motives. “We need to make sure that these AI announcements and job cuts are genuine and not a Trojan horse for widespread offshoring,” assistant national secretary Scott Cowen said.

Début de l'article, extrait de The Sydney Morning Herald. Pour lire la suite, ouvrez l'article chez le média.